curvyblu(bi)rd @curvyblubird - Tumblr Blog

Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation. He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.

The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society. He loved the correct functioning of the social contract. He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it. He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay. He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture. He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.

As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent. The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series? Ludicrous. He was just full of treasure. What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.

In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person. He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.” He just did the work. I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.

some-triangles

This post seems to be making the rounds again so here it is on the word blog

odonata523

GNU Terry Pratchett

mirthfulrealist

GNU Terry Pratchett

scent-ofbooks-deactivated202201

GNU Terry Pratchett

GNU Terry Pratchett

GNU Terry Pratchett

If there's more of us, then we're not rebels.

#the glorious 25th of may #discworld #terry pratchett

comicgeekscomicgeek

“He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew … then it was too high.

It wasn’t a decision he was making, he knew that. It happened far below the levels of the brain where decisions were made. It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes, anymore.”

And this is one of dozens of reasons Sam Vimes is the best. All he has to do to get back to his life, his family, is let history play out as it once did. And he can’t. Plain and simple. He can’t let people die while he can maybe do something about it.

A Glorious 25th of May to you all.

#discworld #terry pratchett #the glorious 25th of may #death mention

what-even-is-thiss

They say that the way you should view disagreements in relationships is “us vs the problem” and not “me vs them” and I think that to a certain extent that mindset can also be helpful when engaging in political or ideological movements

what-even-is-thiss

Taking feminism as an example, it’s a lot easier to see trans people and intersex people and even cis men as your allies within the movement when you view your movement as “us vs inequality and sexism” and not “women vs men”

If you’re some form of a socialist then working with people with different political ideologies than you becomes a lot easier when you view the problem as “us vs the bad system” instead of “socialists vs everyone else”

I personally at least find most problems easier to tackle once I attach this sort of mindset into it. You do not inherently in every situation need to view other human beings as your enemy. And in fact when your goal is to solve the problem and not to Defeat Your Opponent then you can get more creative with your problem solving.

#dreaming a new world into being

katfishdraws

get the print here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/katfishdraws/

teaboot

Not to be all "Marie Kondo was right" but as a person who grew up believing that wanting anything was a character flaw and went into adult life like "I will subsist on the bare minimum required for survival" I have never been happier, tidier, and prouder of my own living space than I have been since I stopped filling my environment with necessary things I resented and started surrounding myself with endearing things I enjoyed using. Like I *want* to take care of my objects now. And there's less of it

teaboot

Actually you know what yeah Marie Kondo WAS right and she's a cool lady.

Of COURSE loving your belongings makes you care for them and feel cared for. I don't even have a lot of money I just don't bring something home unless it brings joy and now my house makes me happy. I wash dishes because I love myself. What the fuck

#caps tw #happiness

makingqueerhistory

“I remember when I first realized I never had to have children. It was like walking out of a narrow alley into a wide open field. I never have to get married. I never have to date anyone. I don’t even have to care about sex. These realizations were like gifts that I gave myself.” ― Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer: A Memoir (Affiliate link)

#happiness #huh #sex mention

ambylotl

During the last Ice Age, what is now part of the Rio Grande Valley was a dense swampy marshland that was home to many unique and now extinct animals, such as the powerful Colombian Mammoth, the Giant Gopher Tortoise, or the cunning Saber-Toothed Tiger. Many modern animals had far vaster ranges and were more plentiful, such as the condor or the whooping crane. By the end of the Pleistocene, as the ice began to recede, and the first Paleo Native Americans established themselves within the continent, many of these creatures died out. Many more today are still at risk of being nothing more than a memory in Texas' Natural History.

ambylotl

ooohhh you want to commission me so baadd oohhhh you are pulling out your wallet and navigating to my DMs to ask me for my very affordable prices ooooohhhhhhh

#so cool!#caps tw #art

ladytabletop

please practice being excited about stuff.

yeah, I said "practice". remember how much joy there was in getting a new toy/book/game as a kid, and practice feeling that excitement again. a lot of us had that instinct squashed out of us, and you may not even know that you've internalized the idea that being excited and joyful isn't "mature" or "cool".

fuck that! let yourself experience joy and excitement! part of being an adult is learning that not only should you be able to feel anger/sadness/hard emotions without suppressing them, you have to do that for joy/excitement/wonder too.

let yourself feel unhindered, unbridled excitement!

#happiness

cripplerage-deactivated20260121

As a wheelchair user I'm trying to reframe my language for "being in the way."

"I'm in the way," "I can't fit," and "I can't go there," is becoming "there's not enough space," "the walkway is too narrow," and "that place isn't accessible."

It's a small change, but to me it feels as if I'm redirecting blame from myself to the people that made these places inaccessible in the first place. I don't want people to just think that they're helping me, I want them to think that they're making up for someone else's wrongdoing. I want them to remember every time I've needed help as something someone else caused.

#ableism mention

sosuperawesome

Eva Volf on Instagram / Etsy

delicatedoggie-deactivated20240

why does talking to a doctor always feel like ur trying to prove u have something and they're just trying to prove u wrong

delicatedoggie-deactivated20240

i will say "hello i either have a kidney infection or the worst uti in the world" and the doctor will say "mmm probably uti" and i will say "i dont knowww im super susceptible to utis and i get them once every 1-3 months and this feels different" and they'll say "no, its probably just a uti!" then they pound on sore spot where my kindey is until im near tears and then go "hmmm i think ur wrong about having a uti, this seems like a kidney infection and this is my own idea that no one else has ever thought of"

delicatedoggie-deactivated20240

everyone thinks this is about a male doctor but women can be bad doctors too!! remember feminism

maculategiraffe

(dave barry)

curvyblubird

Alt text retrieved from above:

[ple. My experience has been that doctors will give you a clear-cut, understandable diagnosis only if you wander in with, say, an ice pick protruding from your skull. And even then, you have to pretend that you don't know what's wrong. If you say, "I have an ice pick in my skull," the doctor will become irritated, because he spent all those years in medical school and he's damned if he's going to accept opinions from an untrained layperson such as yourself. "It conceivably could be an ice pick," he'll say, in a tone of voice that suggests he's talking to a very stupid sheep, "but just in case I'm going to arrange for a test in which we remove a little snippet of your liver every week for eight weeks." So]

#god this whole post is so true #medical abuse #medical trauma #gore i suppose #ableist language

peevishpants

"Hey Zelda take a pic of me pointing at the sheikah tower"

#zelda

millionsknives

i don’t think i’ve rewatched atla since becoming a committed pacifist and i just finished what was probably my tenth rewatch and i have never loved aang more. i've seen it so many times but i still came away with a new appreciation for the way the end of the story was handled. aang is the only survivor of a genocide and he is clinging to the last remnants of his culture and religion, and everyone is telling him the only way to save the world is to kill the dictator whose regime is responsible for the genocide, but to do so would abandon the deeply held beliefs of his people. if aang goes against his beliefs and kills ozai, his people's way of life dies completely and sozin wins.

aang knows it would be wrong but he can't see another way out so he prays for an answer, and the universe hears him and the spirits send out the lion turtle, and the creator answers him. and here's the thing that i never put together before today: aang would not have been able to energybend ozai if he had given in and wanted to kill him. the lion turtle tells aang that only the incorruptible can bend another’s energy, or else they will become corrupted themselves. and i think that aang, because of his love for the fire nation as he had once known it, was never corrupted by personal hatred for the fire lord or the fire nation. he was able to expertly hold two conflicting beliefs in harmony better than any adult could, the belief that ozai is a horrible person and the world would be better off without him and that he's still a human being with a life that is sacred.

and i don't think it's a matter of selfishness like some people make it out to be. aang is not some immature little kid who doesn't want to kill because killing is for bad guys. he's an incredibly wise and spiritual person who was shaped by airbender beliefs and upholds airbender beliefs, and he can see beyond the scope of this war. the balance of the world depends on the existence of the four nations, and aang does not just represent the air nomads, he IS the air nomads. he's all that's left.

despite many people’s interpretation of the four past avatars’ advice, none of the past avatars outright tell him to kill ozai. they tell him to be decisive, to bring justice, to be proactive, to be sacrificial. but none of them tells him definitively to kill him. he doesn't disobey or ignore their advice, he follows their ancient wisdom while still staying true to his beliefs. yangchen actually comes the closest to outright telling him to kill ozai (even more than kiyoshi, surprisingly) but what she fails to account for is that aang is not just the avatar, he is the last airbender, and being the last airbender is far greater a burden than being the avatar. no matter what happens, once he dies, there will always be another avatar. but if he is not careful to preserve the airbender way of life, there will be no more airbenders. yangchen could sacrifice her air nomad way of life for the sake of her duty to the world because there were thousands of other air nomads to continue their traditions. aang has no such privilege.

and it's not that he doesn't want to kill, it's that he actually doesn't think he can do it -- both that he won't be able to emotionally bring himself to kili someone, and, prodigy that he is, he doesn't have the raw bending skill to overcome a comet-powered master firebender. and then it turns from 'i don't think i can do it' into ‘i can’t do it.’ and when the avatar state gives him enough power to actually do it, he changes the answer to ‘i won’t do it.’ he overcomes all the combined power of his past lives to say no, i have found another answer and i will remain incorruptible. to kill is to maintain the power struggle of the fire nation and to reject air nomad wisdom and without airbenders the world CANNOT be brought into balance.

the only thing ozai cares about is power, and that's what the entire fight with ozai is about, physically and ideologically, because ozai only sees power in terms of force, fear, threats, and violence. to ozai, aang (and his entire people) are weak and undeserving of life because they are largely pacifists, but he fails to see the magnificent power that the airbenders do hold, spiritual wisdom and mastery of the self and contentment and joy and harmony and a deep understanding of the world that a man like ozai could never obtain. to kill ozai would ratify ozai’s worldview that power as he defines it is the most important pursuit in the world and the only way to assert one's right to be in the world is to be cruel and violent like him. i think to ozai, becoming powerless might be worse than being dead. he wants power, or he wants death, and aang gives him neither. it upends everything he believed in. aang, the avatar, but more importantly, the last airbender, armed by his past lives' power and his people's love and the spirit world's blessing and the lion turtle's omniscience (and toph's mastery of true sight through neutral jing), ends the war 100 years to the day after the air nomad genocide, in the way that his people taught him, with power that goes beyond force and violence, with spiritual wisdom, with an incorruptible soul, with mercy -- mercy that is not weakness, mercy that brings justice.

#this post made me rethink my position on aang's choice ngl #i still have feelings about the FN mooks not getting this level of consideration but...#aang finding a third solution to his trolley problem (kill a man or the world burns)#in a way that respects his lost culture and refuses to continue the cycle of violence is actually very cash money of him #atla #death mention #caps tw

nonbinarypastels

consent doesn’t only apply to sexual touching.

you’re allowed to tell people not to hug you, not to hold your hand, not to kiss your cheek, not to play with your hair, not to put their hands on you in any way without your permission. you’re allowed to be uncomfortable with these kinds of touching, to tell people that, and to have those boundaries respected. just because a touch isn’t sexual doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to have a problem with it.

you’re allowed to create boundaries about what happens with your body and what other people do with it, regardless of those people’s motivations or their relationship to you. it isn’t only sexual touching people need your consent for and it isn’t only sexual touching that you’re allowed to revoke your consent for. people should not be touching you when you don’t want them to no matter what kind of touching it is.