random things, lots of random fandom stuff, and craft stuff, and occasional other random oddities I find interesting, stay if you'd like, but be kind if you do.
There is literally no circumstance where I support age verification to access a website. As I've said before I'm very much the "there's nuance here" person on almost everything but on this issue there's no nuance for me, it's awful and horrible in and of itself and it also sets an awful and horrible precedent
nimble, a border collie-papillon mix, wins the 12” class in the 2024 masters agility championship. the first time a mixed breed has won at westminster ever.
The irony of this new breed of self-righteous AI hunters on AO3 is that they're all just copy and pasting peoples fics into AI detectors, which are all operated by AI and therefore THEY are feeding people's work into the algorithm without their consent and in some cases no doubt circumventing the locks people put on to avoid getting scraped...
Don't copy and paste anyone's AO3 work into third party websites, you're not the good guys in this situation?
Lord knows that the United States has and continues to commit atrocities. I can't justify that. And the current political situation here is scary as hell.
But I love this place. I love the Atlantic Ocean and New York City and the Pacific Northwest. I love my Blue Ridge Mountains with my whole entire heart. I love cardinals and mockingbirds and kudzu and possums and black rat snakes and the way the woods smell in the mornings.
I love that Americans are known for complimenting strangers. I love that we fry everything, and that we do it well. I love 12-foot-high plastic Halloween skeletons in people’s yards and tacky Christmas lights that stay up too long. I love that we are an unabashedly goofy people.
I love bluegrass music. I love stepping. I love that there are always folklorico dancers in my town’s Mardi Gras parade. I love that my town has a Mardi Gras parade, even though most people here aren’t Catholic or French and didn’t grow up with any kind of Carnivale tradition. I love that if "Livin On A Prayer" comes on a pizzeria, at least one person at each table won't be able to stop themselves from singing along. I love that the middle school gym shakes to the rafters when families cheer for THEIR baby finishing eighth grade and that they bring balloons and bouquets and flower garlands to celebrate.
I love the 80 year old couple at our local No Kings protest. I love all the little kids there with their families, too. I love the brass band that always shows up at protests here and plays old union songs and gospel music. I cry like a damn baby every time I hear “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”
This country is horrible and selfish and destructive, but it’s also wonderful and kind and full of people loving and fighting and trying to make things better. And the people saying that there’s only one kind of real American, and that if you don’t look like they do or talk like they do or think like they do, then you don’t count, those people can go pound sand. I’m as real American as they come, and those people aren’t the only ones who get to love our country.
i can't be the only one who's just straight-up ... bored with women hating themselves. my mom keeps lamenting to me how upset she is about her gray hair. my friend stares at her laugh lines every day in agony. my sister loses sleep over the horrible unbearable thought of looking fat. and every time these women i love open up to me, i can't help but think ... then stop staring at yourself? stop drowning yourself, narcissus, and just fucking live your life instead of sitting in front of a mirror obeying cosmetic corporations' lies. just stop it. this is getting ridiculous. you're too smart to be falling for this bullshit. "oh no but these men who hate women told me that if i'm ugly i'm worthless!" girl if you actually believe that then good luck. but i am getting worse at being supportive of people whose nonsense worldviews keep them trapped in pain. stop looking at yourself start fucking living i am pleading you deserve to be happy and it is stupid that you disagree
Someone in the comments said "you really said just stop being insecure" and yes :) make an effort to stop spiralling about your looks, challenge insecure thoughts and stop doing things that lead to you feeling insecure.
I always come back to this: Do your insecurities match your morals?
Do you truly believe that having belly fat makes people disgusting? That the media should have final say on how you feel about yourself? If you don't believe it and there is a mismatch between your moral beliefs and your gut reaction to your appearance...
Then yeah. Stop being insecure. It's work but it's worth it.
Doomed by the narrative this, narrative's favorite (bad thing) that, you know what I want to see more of, cradled gently by the narrative
And keep in mind this involves a separation in the consciousness of the structure of the narrative, and the framing of it. The plot is the narrative, but so is the adjectives, descriptions, pacing, and framing.
You were always going to die, you were always going to undergo horrors beyond your control. You were always going to willing step into the trap because that is who you are and the story you were put into, and that is The Point of it all.
But.
You were also the narrative's favorite, the narrative cradled you through the horror and pain, and gave you a happy beginning and a bright spots in the dark days. Made sure you were loved and happy, and that the unspeakable lack of agency described by the plot worked out for you to be happy. The narrative made sure to say that this one has done hard and terrible things, yes, but look at how cared for they were, look at how loved. The narrative's had a soft spot for you, and delayed the inevitable by letting you rest a few more times under cool shade or bathed in warm smiles and laughter because it knew what was coming ahead.
Just the narrative telling you what happens, and the narrative telling you how it happens often have different agendas, and that's when it's most painful to the reader, I think. When we understand that that is what needs to happen, but how it's happening keeps trying and failing to cushion the blow. Keeps avoiding a quick and painless end in it's desperation to hold the characters close and keep them safe. Keeps building the emotional investment in these characters in an attempt at a stay of execution that will never really come, and hits the reader that much harder for the effort.
But also when the narrative allows the characters dignity and respect in their decline and demands that the audience asks themselves if they could have done any better under such conditions.
There's so many ways the narrative can be compassionate with characters and I love it everytime.
A prime example of this is in Basile's tale 'The Sun, The Moon, and Talia', a tale that is a "Sleeping Beauty" type tale. In this version of the story she gets a flax fiber stuck under her nail and falls asleep. The rest of the kingdom is awake, and she has an attendant as she sleeps. A king from a neighboring kingdom comes by and sees her, and through a series of events I can't recall exactly at the moment, is able to see her with her father's permission. He, if I remember the wording correctly, "collects the fruits of passion" with her, and rides off into the sunset. Nine months later she gives birth to twins. The attendant helps the babies nurse, and Talia is awoken when one of her children sucks on her finger, and sucks the flax fiber out. The king rides back when he remembers her existence, gets married, and brings her home to his wife, who is not amused.
The tale continues from there, but the beginning of the tale is extremely provocative. Upon first reading it, I was astonished that Talia could ever fall in love with or forgive this king, that she was not at all alarmed to find she had conceived, carried, and given birth to two children while unconscious.
And then I read Abate's essay "You Must Kill Her" about 'Snow White', 'Rock a Bye Baby', and real violence against children. The culmination of her argument was that not only did violence against children occur, but feelings of anger, frustration, desperation, and a desire to commit violence against children are far more common. Not that parents generally act on these feelings, and many are horrified by them, but sleep depravation, hormonal shifts, and the general tumultuousness of being a parent make it natural that these feelings would occur, however briefly, however taboo. She also asserts that fairytales are the ideal vent for these emotions. Distanced enough from one's self that there is a sense of plausible deniability, and projected onto a character, the Queen, who is able to act out these feelings with no real consequences to the child, and is punished for it. It allows a release for these emotions to be said and heard and acknowledged within a setting where no onlooker would be truly worried about violence. This prevents these feelings from bottling up.
It made me wonder what other feelings were put into stories this way, and if the fear of the very real dangers of marriage outside of a woman's control, pregnancy, and childbirth, both labor and later complications. Not to mention the danger of sex in a time with limited understandings of STDs, a husband who one couldn't divorce if he wasn't faithful, and likely a limited education prior to marriage. It would be horrifying. This wasn't something that happened only in fairy tales, this was the every day life of many women. It would, then, only be natural to project these fears onto a vulnerable character in a story with all of her agency taken away, and then let the narrative take care of her with compassion and empathy, let her sit out the scary parts safely asleep. In this essay I will
Yeah. That. I spent my formative years in DC for Reagan's terms, and never thought I'd make it to *twenty* much less this far beyond. And when I realized I would be? I found myself suddenly without any real, actionable plan for the future.
The AIDS epidemic was monstrous. Not only for the lack of cure, but for the easy excuse it made for 'good people' to rid themselves of those disgusting gays.
The national willingness to discard an entire generation of (at first) gay men and then any queer persons has done immeasurable damage to every single one of us who survived it. The horror stories you might have seen in tabloids or online memorials only scratch the surface. We were unpersoned. We were named dangerous simply by our existence, and our presence was a herald for death and disease.
Our joy was not in spite of this. Our mad parties, the tendency to live in the moment, the stereotypical 'cattiness' and sex-crazed outlooks that media showers us with us even now, these were survival techniques. We dance because we lived another day. We craved physical contact from a world that feared us even in the same room, or touching the same door handle, or gods forbid us holding your hand.
And it's happening again.
If you notice your queer elders seem a little agitated beyond their usual baseline with what's happening with their trans peers this time around it's because we all recognize it from the 70s, 80s, 90s.
Name it a disease. Imply it's contagious, made-up for attention, or masking the 'real' problem (it's always pedophilia, always), often in the same breath. Consistency doesn't matter, only fear and hatred.
Say trans folks aren't worth the same considerations that good, upstanding people are. Deny them the medical care that, were they not trans, they would otherwise qualify for. Gender affirming care. Hormone treatments. Comprehensive therapy. Acceptance.
(Hell, even those lucky enough to escape obvious open discrimination find it on the back end, with medical care suddenly not being covered after being prescribed. Ask me how I know.)
And it's not just the right-wingers. Ask your Democratic or NP rep, if you have one, their thoughts on transgender rights. Listen close. See if they actually say anything of substance.
And then when trans people start dying off in droves, vanishing to forced detransitioning, assault, murder, or worse, well, that's just proof there's something wrong, isn't it? Not with the system. With us.
This is why we ask that the newer generations of queer folks learn the history. It's not *all* about Stonewall and Pride. It's about the lengths that those in charge will go to in order to ensure our deaths.
Just called my senator and the aide said "Yeah, you're not the first person we've heard from about this today." It is 9:45 in the morning and she already had that weary tone.
My mom put a new spin on this - extra hurdles on online resources is elder discrimination. Grandpa can barely work a browser as is, this sort of thing pushes them away entirely.
“A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental, on your humble flat, or help you at the automat.”
Like literally the most famous song about how much girls love jewellry is just explaining the importance of getting jewellry for when your partner leaves you penniless and alone.
The founder of Girl Scouting in the US, Juliette Gordon Low, funded her first troop by selling her pearl necklace, which was her only belonging after her husband died and left everything to his mistress.
She founded Girl Scouts to teach girls self-sufficiency so they wouldn’t have to go through what she went through when her husband died and she didn’t know how to take care of herself.
While we’re on the subject, let’s please also remember that historically disenfranchised communities who had to worry about frequently being run out of town often bought expensive jewelry with their limited funds not because they were greedy or tacky or classless, but rather because you can’t sew a real estate investment into the lining of your coat, and the powers that be can’t freeze a diamond necklace the way that they can freeze a bank account.
Speaking as a jeweler in America right now, I cannot tell you how many people are buying jewelry as an emergency fund. The business my spouse started and I’ve been helping with for nigh on 20 years now, we sell to the queer community. Other people, sure, but I cannot tell you how many queer folks I’ve made jewelry for.
And they are buying as much as they can right now. Genderweird people, gay men, bi folks in same gender marriages, lesbians, anyone who looks around and realizes that the noose is tightening? They’re buying what they can afford. Sometimes a little more than they can afford.
People are asking about metal purity in our jewelry. This has never happened before, not even during the first trump debacle. People are worried, wondering how they can get out if things go real bad. And I tell them how to sell their stuff for cash if they need to. How to find places that won’t cheat them.
How to get the most out of the jewelry they already have.
They play it off as a joke, most of the time, and I’ll play along to make sure they’re comfortable, but we all know the joke is only funny because it’s true.
I have warned people that they won’t get what they paid back. People who buy jewelry are trying to make money, and they don’t care about the hours put into hand crafting a piece. They care about the metal, the stones, and not much else. Folks I tell this to understand, and sometimes ask if we sell bullion. Or coins. Something that they can use in the emergency they expect is coming.
I wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish more people worried about what it says when people are planning on fleeing their homes with only what they have on their back. I wish I didn’t have a plan for what happens when my genderqueer ass is declared illegal.
The thing is that Eridians canonically breed externally, by just laying eggs next to each other. Since it happens outside the body, and exclusively for procreation, it seems unlikely that this process would have the same kind of taboos attached to it that human sex does?
By comparison, book Eridians have huge taboos around eating. Possibly in part because they shit at the same time as they eat. Grace manages to talk Rocky into letting him watch him eat 'for science', but it's a hugely awkward experience. At the end of the book, it's mentioned that Rocky had to tell Grace to stop talking about food in 'polite company' when they got to Erid.
So what I'm saying is: Eridian middle school teacher Ryland Grace is probably gonna have to train himself back into saying “fuck”, because “fudge” is likely way more profane from an Eridian perspective.
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