Moonchild

[eesirachs]

summer reading list—unconventional critical religious theory

catherine keller; face of the deep

minnie khumalo; "judges 19 and non-con: sado-kantian aesthetics of violence in the tale of an unnamed woman," in rape culture and religious studies

griselda pollock; "femininity: aporia or difference," in the matrixial borderspace

monica r. miller, "i am a nappy-headed ho: (re)signifying 'deviance' in the haraam of religious respectability," in ain't i a womanist too

avivah zornberg, the murmuring deep: reflections on the biblical unconsious

saidiya hartman, "venus in two acts"

avgi saketopoulou, sexuality beyond consent: risk, race, traumatophilia

rhiannon graybill, are we not men? unstable masculinity in the hebrew prophets

vanessa sinclair, the queerness of psychoanalysis

sigmund freud, introductory lectures

alphonso lingis, excesses

julia kristeva, revolution in poetic language

elizabeth grosz, volatile bodies: toward a corporal feminism

luis menéndez-antuña, bridging the interpretive abyss

griselda pollock, psychoanalysis and the image

kristen neumann, the routledge handbook of senses in the ancient near east

elizabeth wright, psychoanalytic criticism

mieke bal, death and dissymmetry: the politics of coherence in the book of judges

reed calrson, unfamiliar selves: possession and other spirit phenomena

marcella althaus-reid, indecent theology: perversions in sex, gender, and politics

black and koosed, reading with feeling: affect theory and the bible

papenberg and zarzycka, carnal aesthetics: transgressive imagery and feminist politics

[sexchangedotcom]

my beautiful baby who i'm naming untitled document

[sexchangedotcom]

i can't seem to find my baby

[kaleidoscopic-quiddity]

remmick and the vampires present a false dichotomy

Hogwood (the man who sold the twins the mill) and the KKK are very obviously bad, they are outright malicious bigotry, they use the n-word and plan to lynch the moore's and their community, they are so blatantly racist and hateful it's unavoidably obvious

remmick and the vampires however say that they believe in equality, say that they want to create a community, and yet remmick's goal throught the movie is to both metaphorically and literally steal sammie's ability for his own goal of reconnecting with his irish ancestors, a white man wants to harm a young and upcoming black man and use talents for his own goals without giving any regard to said black man's autonomy or agency

when sammie sings 'I lied to you' in the juke joint and calls forth the spirits from the past and future, it's a blend of cultures; west african, east asian, native american, and african american song and dance blend together across time and space to tell the stories of blues; where it takes its inspiration from, the music genres it then inspired, the complex history of black american culture and its intersections with other peoples of colour in the USA

when remmick and the vampires kill and turn the people in the juke joint, and then perform rocky road to dublin, only remmick's irish culture is on display, there is no influence from the black and asian people he has forcibly assimilated into his song, it's juxtaposition with the earlier scene is blatant, remmick is more than happy to assimilate people of colour into his 'community' of 'equals', and yet its only whiteness that is celebrated, that is normative

remmick claims that he's doing people a favour by turning them immortal, conviently ignoring that he literally has to suck the life out of them to do so, trapping their spirits on earth, he claims that he's the good guy, that the KKK were gonna come and lynch everyone at the joint in the morning anyways, conviently ignoring that he's doing the exact same thing; a white man leading a mob to kill a bunch of black people

in the final confrontation with sammie remmick repeatedly dunks him into the river, a forceful baptism. both the celtic irish and enslaved west africans had their religions suppressed and destroyed by colonialsm, had christianity forced upon them by the british empire, and in that scene we see remmick repeating that cycle, using christianity to inflict harm, and sammie reclaiming christianity, despite all the complex emotions he has arround it, as many colonised peoples have and still do, when he recites the lord's prayer

remmick and the vampires are no less racist than hogwood and the KKK, are no less predatory or evil, they're just less blantant about their bigotry, they represent the system, the normalised white supremacy that is seeped into the very foundation of culture in america, the point isnt that remmick would call any of the black characters in the movie the n-word, i dont think he would, the point is that his exploitation and desacration and inserting-himself-into-when-he-wasn't-invited of the juke joint is a microcosm of what white people have done to black american arts and culture since ever since there have been black and white people in america, and even before that

theres a reason vultures are shown early on in this movie

[snarlmalden]

The portrayal of white people who have been violently separated from their own culture stealing the power of black culture and music to try to get reconnected was SO literal and somehow not at ALL heavy-handed or trite. Fkn remarkable.

[deydenier]

Death and Life

Prints available here

[quackysprouts]

questions asked through the years

a girl can be evil and tragic at the same time. cersei, sorry you were born a female lannister in GOT🥹

[soncee]

Embroidery lessons

[ghostinwinterfell]

what I love about catelyn’s characterization is that she isn’t everyone’s mother. she refuses to treat jon like one of her own. she doesn’t have any “motherly instincts” towards theon. even with brienne, she connects with her on more of a woman to woman level than through some mother-daughter dynamic. she never feels obligated to play the angelic “mother to all” figure.

but that’s the best part about her journey as a mother—it’s kind of messy. she has a favorite child, she’s forced to choose between her kids, she actively resents a motherless boy, she dislikes the hostage child living in her home. like yeah catelyn’s love for her children is beautiful and “pure” or whatever, but it also makes her cruel, selfish, impulsive, ruthless, even vengeful.

tbh catelyn’s sense of motherhood is just so unapologetically human, so refreshingly honest. she may be a mother, but there’s nothing romantic or intuitive or easy about it. catelyn stark loves her children, but it’s not that simple.

[rederiswrites]

There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!

[ahedderick]

This is a big reason that I have always loved the Brother Cadfael novels, set in the mid 1100s. Written by Ellis Peters, each book has such a vivid sense of the place and the time period. Many different settings around Shrewsbury are described, along with the people and their various jobs.

[toooldfortumbling]

I love that kind of world building and would add that many resources were tightly regulated that we don't consider nowadays. Examples are the right to herd your pigs in an oak forest belonging to a specific monastery (saw an example where an altar piece had a carved pig to make sure the claim was known and advertised) or down to which farmers had the right to tree leaves in the fall (shortage of other animal bedding in certain Swiss valleys). The idea of a wilderness in a medieval setting is not what we think.

[rederiswrites]

Great points! Thank you.

[batbetbitbotbut]

Forever recommending A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry as an introductory resource for this! The author is a historian of the ancient mediterranean and he has a lengthy two-part blog post on "lonely cities": how fictional cities tend to look in pseudomedieval fantasy versus how real cities actually worked, specifically how they reshaped the land use for many miles around. Part I, part II, or available read aloud on YouTube here.

[tangerineseed]

.

[sashasactivities]

FISH QUIZZZZ!!! FISH QUIZZZ!!!! TAKE IT!!! special request from my friend avery shoutout avery <3 it's right up my alley anyways... im so jellyfish coded !!

includes both freshwater and saltwater creatures, with 18 questions and 36 creatures!! interested in more quizzes? find me at @sashasactivit

quiz made: june 2024

[scrupulosity-comics]

the terror of being found by something seeking a frontier

[in-sheeps-clothing]

If something is capable of being proven wrong by rational debate, then it deserves to be.

[scrupulosity-comics]

that’s not even a good bastardization of that fake Carl Sagan quote, buddy

[lunchboxpoems]

BOB HICOK

[textid]

text ID: THE EULOGY I DIDN'T GIVE (XXIV)

My younger brother was afraid of thunder, lightning. My father bought a recording of storms, put it on the stereo, and rocked on the love seat with my brother over and over, until the sound meant comfort, warmth. Much later, my brother became obsessed with meteorology and dreamed of becoming a weatherman. When I finally connected the early fear with the later passion, we were looking down at my father in his coffin. Not my father but his body. More like an echo of his flesh. No weather on his face. I’d seen him often in a suit but never wearing a vest. Pajamas would have made more sense. The soft rain of the talking all around us was a cocoon I wanted to live inside. I heard the metronome of my heart and thought of Quakers waiting for silence to open its mouth. Of the hope just below the surface of the phrase, keeping time. - Bob Hicok

[kvothes]

marie howe, in an interview with krista tippett of on being

[pronouncingitwang]

[image text:

Ms. Tippett: What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?

Ms. Howe: Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.

Ms. Tippett: It does.

/end ID]

[inkwell-attitude]

all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is

[fatal-blow]

okay so i know i said most of this in the replies but it might be easier to actually reblog and say stuff instead lmao

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

tl;dr i like to think of major climate events that might have also shaped the land on top of some basic rules

[possiblypedanticrpgideas]

The Artifexian has an entire series on building your world from literally the stars down and then the ground up.

Worldbuilding Videos - YouTube

All my worldbuilding videos

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

[inkwell-attitude]

holy shit?

[eesirachs]

Do you have any recommendations for getting into Freud? Especially within a biblical context. Thank you, Professor 🫡

his introductory lectures are the entry-point. use the references he makes to his other publications to move more intentionally into him. if you find a meaningful subject or referent that he is vague about, use nosubject for sources. then, resources on how to read in the freudian method—grosz's volatile bodies; pollock's psychoanalysis and the image; gottlieb-zornberg's beginnings of desire; bersani's freudian body; graybill's are we not men; wright's psychoanalytic criticism; keller's face of the deep. i have more of my recs here

[theambitiouswoman]

[iamwhatismissing]

made me think of this

[id: x/twitter qrt from user styloshka that says "I read a forum post about art once, that it's a product of the dialectic between the effort of the artist and the friction of the medium. You push on the thing and the thing pushes back on you, it has its own voice. The weight of a piano key, the tension of a guitar string." original post from user colleen_daves says "Don't you want to skip over the mindless drudgery that is making art?" I do six stand embroidery and break like 10 needles a day, would I prefer that activity didn't hurt my hands and make me angry? Sure. But that's what makes having the finished piece after so worth it to me."]

link