Delvin Anaris's Doubtful Affairs

Just a place for stuff I see, and sometimes stuff I think.

[dduane]

i first read your books when I was a kid, and honestly thought id hallucinated them ("so you want to be a wizard" is a fantastic title, but admittedly feels a bit like a fever dream), but rn the whole concept of wizardry and how they technically defeated the lone power early in the series but they still keep fighting for humanity bc the fight, though eventually won, is still worth it, is honestly one of the main things keeping me going. idk where im going with this, but i wanted to say. your books are instrumental to me. even tho I thought that id made them up bc I found them at the library many years after the "so you want to be [x]" series stopped being popular. i hope you have a nice day and get to have something nice happen to u

I'm so glad the books have worked for you! Thanks for letting me know. 🙂

You may laugh a little to hear that there was one afternoon not too long ago while, in the middle of doing some research, I started wondering whether I'd hallucinated the source of the title of SYWTBAW myself.

I'd had an ask from somebody here about the origin of the concept of the Wizard's Manual. A brief discussion of the history of the title was going to flow from that, and I needed to find the name of the publisher of that original series of 1950s and 1960s career books from which the format had come: "So You Want To Be A {Scientist / Teacher / Nurse / Physicist / (whatever)]").

And I went Googling for that info, and ... could I find it? Could I find anything about those books (which surely, it seemed to me, ought to be at least somewhere in the first few pages' worth of search results)?

Nope.

As I kept searching, and finding nothing, I started becoming increasingly horrified. My memory told me that those books had been all over several small-town libraries when I was a child. Was it possible... that my memories were wrong? Had I imagined or invented those books? Had I made up that title out of whole cloth?

For about five minutes I sat there in a cold sweat, typing in search after search and (frankly) freaking out.

...Finally, though, way WAY down the search results, I found what I needed. The books' publisher turned out to be Harper (or later, Harper & Row): and the author of many of them, to my great delight, turned out to be Alan E. Nourse... who was not just a nonfiction writer, but also wrote SF, and who'd written a book called Star Surgeon that I'd dearly loved as a young reader. (A full collection of Nourse's books and other writings is preserved at Boston University.)

So THAT all turned out to be OK. But jeeeeeez... talk about a bad few moments. 😅

Anyway: thanks again for letting me know the books have mattered to you. It matters to me a lot. 🙂

[delvinanaris]

I could swear that I remember seeing those book titles before I ever read SYWTBAW for the first time (which might have been from the 1983(?) edition with the dragon on the cover, or might have been from the Support Your Local Wizard omnibus edition). I would guess that would’ve been when I was Nita’s age or just a little younger, which suggests that in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s they were still around in our small-town library.

[ravennowithtea]

hoping for much more wheee~ than whooo~ in the new year 🫂

[isnt-it-pretty]

Finally got the Alanna the Lioness tattoo I always wanted, inspired by my childhood copy of Lioness Rampant. I spent a long time looking for artists whose style I liked and who might enjoy designing it, and settled on @midknight.ink over on instragram! She did such an amazing job. I know Alanna's magic is violet, but the pinkish fire matched the overall tattoo design more.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

you can believe victims about what they experienced and also not want to torch the lives of the people they've accused without proof. that is a space you can walk in and usually it's not even that hard. I say this as a survivor of domestic violence. "believe victims" doesn't mean get torches and pitchforks any more than "innocent until proven guilty" means victims are lying. please please learn this "believe victims" isn't about the perpetrators it's about the victims

[xclowniex2]

There will be news articles that come out saying how antisemitism makes up the majority of religious hate crimes in a city or country. And people will go "They're trying to silence us and not enough has been done about israel"

Like cool maybe enough would have been done if you targeted the israeli government and not Shlomo Kikeberg who is just going about his day only to be stabbed for the crime of being jewish.

I assure you that reporting hate crimes, which have to have the element of a crime being committed as well as the motivation of hate to be officially reported as one, is not silencing you. Unless your idea of a voice is stabbing random jews in the diaspora, in which case yeah, you should be silenced and i am suprised you haven't already by the boot in your mouth.

[trans-girl-nausicaa]

We need to standardize clothing sizes. This is fucking stupid. Pass a federal law or something. I’m sick of this shit.

[prospitianescapee]

Source: https://qz.com/quartzy/1314827/the-average-american-woman-is-not-a-size-16

[duskdragonxiii]

I always forget Americans have sinks that kill everything

[nonepronounwithleftboy]

I'm so fucking scared of these things.

[redskyeatnight]

I genuinely don't understand those sinks. Why do they exist? Why is that necessary? What the heck are you putting down your sinks that necessitates that??? Genuinely curious.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I've asked around before and apparently in many areas of the US it makes more logistical sense to treat soft food scraps like cooked vegetable matter as water waste instead of having separate systems for food waste. It's just the easiest way to transport it given the way their cities are set up and how their water system works. This info is very out of date so I don't know if it's still true (I know a lot of US cities have green waste recycling programs these days) but that's where it comes from. It does make sense because the water pipes are the easiest way to get rid of goo without burning petrol by carrying it in trucks, so it comes down to pipe maintenance vs. garbage truck fuel and maintenance, taking into account how close composting facilities are etc.

I've never lived anywhere without a backyard (Australian, not much of a deep city person) so the idea of not having anywhere to compost food scraps was completely alien to me but I see the logic of the Sink Blender.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#thanks for (probably) explaining this!! absolutely baffling#now can someone explain why everyone in the US has a clothes dryer but the same ppl hand wash their dishes??#in Germany clothes dryers are still somewhat of a luxury - even when you have one you'll line dry most of your stuff#but most households do have a dishwasher. Especially once there are kids#is this bc water and electricity are cheaper in the US like with gas? Are dishwashers more expensive (than dryers??) confusing

I'm given to understand that dryers are normalised there because in many areas it's considered at minimum rude, if not straightup forbidden (HOAs baffle me), to line dry clothes outside. I do not know why. Americans just hate to see drying laundry I guess?

Some areas also have a lot of rainfall that makes line drying a pain but that's also true in lots of countries that don't tend to use dryers so I'm not sure it's much of a motivating factor. I'm mentioning it because Americans will if I don't.

[delvinanaris]

At least in the part of America I’m from, it’s less the rain, which is more of a periodic nuisance as far as drying is concerned, and more the 6 months when attempting to dry clothes outside would result in clothesicles. In some places/times, they’d freeze up within minutes of being brought outside (like, single-digit minutes).

Most of Western Europe doesn’t have the same kind of winter that the entire northern part of the US has, so it’s understandable that they don’t have the same hard requirement for clothes dryers. Plus the US has, at least generally speaking, enough space that having an extra 4-foot-cube appliance isn’t a big hardship most places.

[ssaalexblake]

a shitton of the dw fandom didn't ever want a woman to be the doctor, no matter what they claimed, they didn't Actually want what that would mean. They didn't want it to be anything more than some kind of symbolic casting. They wanted a woman to act out the lines but they didn't want whichever woman it was to effect the comfortable narrative the show had fed people for fifty-fiveish years. That's too much woman smell for them, apparently.

Because 13 having a woman cast was an actual part of the narrative. It was something that the doctor, like fans, wanted to ignore and not be an issue but it Was an issue.

13 is like a cautionary tale against toxic femininity. Twelve asked their next regeneration to live laugh love, basically, and in trying to do so Thirteen ended up with a neurosis that mirrors a real patriarchal standard where that's All women are supposed to do. 13 had an actual narrative reason to act this way because of what Twelve said, it wasn't human socialisation, it was an active choice on her part to try and live up to what twelve wished as he died and then the narrative broke her down because of it and showed all the ways that that kind of sentiment is toxic as hell.

Then there was another sect of specifically female fans that were actively angry that Thirteen wasn't their chance to live vicariously and act like the boot on somebody's neck through her as some kind of messed up power fantasy. They wanted toxic masculnity, they wanted her treating people like shit to microdose on it themselves. And yes, I literally had somebody point blank tell me this on one of my posts in like 2019. They were Furious they'd not been given a proxy to relate to who treats people like shit. This is extra wild because while the doctor is many things, they are rarely an example of toxic masculinity.

Side note: Toxic masculinity is not bad because it's a man thing. It's bad because it's bad. Feminism is not there so girls get to be that awful too because #equality. Feminism is there so Nobody gets to be that awful. Wanting a woman in a kids show to act disgustingly as a power trip is wild and just crappy in general.

Instead, 13's (actor's) womanhood actually effected the narrative. But also, it made it abundantly clear sometimes just How casting a woman made basic dw staples come across Really different just by virtue of a woman being there. And people hated that, too. It wasn't supposed to effect the story, right?

Basic doctor and master toxicity and monstrosity? Suddenly there are think pieces on how uniquely awful this all is specifically for that pair, apparently. And they were bad think pieces. And this was just bog standard usual BS for the characters. Frankly, even, it was less awful than what ten and simm did to each other by miles.

imo, the backlash to 13 and dhawan!master was also rather condescending to the audience? This was all absolutely portrayed as awful between them the entire way through and only people who Genuinely think that all television is to be viewed through a lens of giving good representation and not telling stories would ever think the show was saying this was good. And tween/teen audiences (it's basically a YA show) are Not stupid. I was that age during the era of simm and ten, and funnily enough my teenage brain very easily worked out how fucked up their dynamic was even Through the yearning heart eyes they were throwing at each other. To be blunt, it's never that complicated. The most murky it got was with Twissy but owing to the fact that the master was the woman and the doctor the guy, their messy toxic moments are rarely dragged out in fandom to be condemned. People even backbend to make twelve into an abusive monster and ignore Missy's actions. Because man monster woman good, apparently.

Spydoc's narrative actually fairly consistently follows a story of intimate partner violence. Risk of death is Shockingly high when a partner chooses to leave the abuser. Risk of death practically doubles if a man puts his hands around a woman's neck (even when she does grin like a shark as he does it). You could almost view it as an allegory for domestic violence. Not an advertisement. An allegory. But again, killing each other is just basic between those two. It was the casting that made people flinch, and not Only because of the woman issue. The racism being thrown around about Dhawan was and probably still is in some spaces was fucking rancid.

spydoc is inherently uncomfortable in ways so many other best enemies pairs aren't. The casting effected the viewer's perception of the dynamic and made it uncomfortable. A woman being there and following the same dynamic of the men before her made what was easy to digest previously a tough pill to swallow simply by virtue of them Not being any different.

DW is just so much more Comfortable for people when everybody is a white man to lots of people. Adding women complicated things and massive chunks of fandom didn't want a woman to have any kind of noticeable effect on the narrative of the show or on how they had to analyse it, but it Did! Because of course it did! It had to! There was no way it couldn't!

When 13 acts differently because she's forced to because of her body, it was uncomfortable and annoying because suddenly it's not a foregone conclusion that the doctor will swan in and be The Guy in the room because the universe won't forget she's The Woman in the room. When 13 doesn't act differently because she's the same person as every man before her it makes people uncomfortable because the audience views her differently and how she's acting and treated Because she's a girl. Even the things that are the same are different.

So many people spent so much time angry that they never cast a woman and when they did, they hated that they didn't ignore that they'd cast a woman to make everything as comfortable (read: male) as it had been before.

As a woman. Honestly. Why should my discomfort not be portrayed on screen?

[catsuggest]

Cat, what do you suggest for someone who had a really bad day?

worry not for im know somebeody whom is expert in vanquishinge bad days

[catsuggest]

he is beinge summoned. remain calmb

[catsuggest]

cousin bartók is arrivinge imminently !

[catsuggest]

cousin bartók have arrived bearinge mighty furs & soothinge gift of moss. bad days are now vanquished permanentlé

[amanda-tapping-ripples]

When I started Stargate, I got the part, I was sooo thrilled to have this incredible character, to be playing someone in the military and I had so much respect, to be playing someone who’s so smart and so liberated and… I thought, “Yes!”

I had two weeks to move from Toronto to Vancouver. I flew out there, I had my first wardrobe fitting. And one of the things that was in… the thing that was in the wardrobe room was a very low-cut tank top and a push-up bra…

And I turned to the costume designer - whom I’ve worked with since, who’s wonderful - and I said, “What… What is this?” And she said “Well, they wanna see what you look like in it.” And I said, “…but this… nobody in the military, no captain in the US airforce would wear this… while her male counterparts are wearing crew neck T-shirts and… I c… I… I can’t do it!” And she said, “Well, they just wanna see what you look like and take a picture and…”

I was like “…”

And I panicked because I thought I have just been given this amazing opportunity - I didn’t know it would last 10 years but I knew it was gonna be a kick-ass show - and I was like… “I can’t do it…”

And I started to cry and I said, “You have to go upstairs and tell them I’m not doing it. And if it means that they recast the part then recast the part but you’ve cast a smart woman and you’ve cast somebody who’s never tried to get a job based on her looks or her body. I’ve always played strong, smart women, I… I can’t do it. So if they wanna recast the part I totally get it but I’m not playing that version of this character.”

But I’m saying this while I’m blubbering because I’m suffering that I’ve just lost maybe the best job of my career…

And so she said, “Okay” and I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve never been difficult, I don’t… but I can’t do that!”

So she went upstairs and she came back down and she said, “Okay, no problem.” And I said, “Okay, so what’s my costume?” And she said, “Well…” And I said, “Just… What are the guys wearing?”

So she handed me a black T-Shirt and the BDUs, which is what my character would wear in the field with her male counterparts, and that’s where we went from there.

But that to me was the defining moment of…

And I still cry about it because I still remember that young woman on the verge of breaking into the… new something big, being petrified that she was gonna loose it, but… I knew that I couldn’t play the TNA version of Sam Carter.

And to the powers-that-be, great credit, I don’t think that it was Brad or Jonathan or Rob or any of those guys who were asking for it, I think it might have been, you know, much higher up. But to their great credit they were like, “No, absolutely not. She’s… okay, whatever she’s comfortable in.”

And… thank God that they went that route. But that was… that was one of the defining moments.

~ Amanda Tapping ~ Shore Leave 2013

[pollsforadults]

Spin the wheel. Now, imagine you're on a first date with someone who says they`re a [result]. How does this affect the odds of a second date?

100% guarantee I'll want a second date

It's significantly more likely

The odds don't change

It's significantly less likely

There wont be a second date. Absolutely not

Voting ended onJun 13

Picker Wheel - Spin the Wheel to Decide a Random Choice

Picker Wheel is a wheel spinner for a random picker. Various functions & customization. Enter choices or names, spin the wheel to decide a r

(anon submission)

[frogmood]

there’s a common myth that languages get simpler over time, which on the face of it, seems like it would stand to reason. Languages is a tool of communication, so logically the simplest and most easily understood systems should be selected for, right?

well, what researchers found when studying the history of our languages is, well, no. there isn’t a noticeable trend towards simplicity in language.

and the reason why is because language is not just a tool for communication. it’s also for fun

[rhetoricandlogic]

#one of the biggest driving forces for change is language is slang#it’s just peol being silly and telling jokes with words#and about words#case and point#the word butterfly#it was originally ’flutterby’#but then at some point in time a population of people thought it would be funny to call them butterfly’s instead#and it caught on like wildfire#it was like a medieval meme#(or whenever it changed I don’t actually know)#everyone was like ‘omg hilarious. we should all start doing this’#and now here we are#language

Where'd you get that one from? Butterfly most definitely originated from Old English buterflēoge which in turn came from Dutch and German.

[delvinanaris]

Of course, one of the other fun things to do with language is (and always has been!) inventing etymologies for words and phrases and then presenting them as if they’re unshakable truth 😅

[robertreich]

The Coming Revival of America https://robertreich.substack.com/p/we-needed-trump

[delvinanaris]

TL;DR: the thesis is that maybe good will come of this terrible time because it laid bare the weaknesses in our current system.

I would say that a better conclusion is less that we needed Trump, and more that without fundamental changes, something like this was nearly inevitable.

The changes Reagan and his era put in motion—both on the cultural side, such as the “greed is good” lionization of Wall Street and the vilification of labor, and on the legal side, with massive deregulation, gutting of antitrust leading to hyperconsolidation, and destruction of public welfare as a primary duty of the government—too rapidly became self-sustaining, particularly on the back of media consolidation under right-wing oligarchs. We have been on this road ever since.

There are, of course, always possible ways to avert a catastrophe like this one—but they require fully breaking one or more of the positive feedback loops that keep it going, such as poor education, cultural devaluation of civic engagement, minority voter suppression, big money in politics, etc.

We can only hope that once we do actually end the catastrophe, the American left is able to take and hold power in a way that allows it to make meaningful change without being co-opted by the very same systems and groups that are even now keeping the horror train rolling.

[teaboot]

Dear Teaboot, how does one cope with hating their parent(s)?

You should know that I've written and erased a number of answers before coming to this conclusion.

Anger is not an emotion unto itself. Anger is an expression of fear, of helplessness, of frustration, of grief. Where there is Anger, there is something deeper, like the roots of a vine that might strangle you. If you cannot reach the roots, you will not kill the vine.

Anger, though, serves a purpose- to inspire urgency, to act, to move in the defense of self or others, to call out injustice.

Anger is only an evil when it is acted on without discipline. When it is allowed to become a reflex motivator, when it skips higher thought and speaks directly through the teeth and the hands. This is anger without control.

This question has forced me to ask myself if there is a difference between anger and hatred.

Is hatred irrational? Anger may be as well. Is hatred directed to the innocent? Anger can be, too. Is hatred akin to cruelty? Anger, again, is not innocent of needless suffering.

So what purpose must hatred serve, in pursuit of a just world? What can hatred do that anger cannot? What does it mean to hate something?

I'm not a scholar. I haven't studied these things academically. But thinking of my own experiences, and remembering the exact circumstances and contexts and the nuance of every little piece on the board, I can tell you that there was revulsion, and there was myself, and there was forces beyond my control.

I think that Hate is when anger fears it cannot win. I think Hate is when you are faced with something that you want to believe you have possibility of overcoming while suspecting in some way that you cannot. I think that Hate is when you are afraid of the thing that enrages you.

Hate, if you ask my opinion, is a bit like being mauled by a bear, knowing that you will not survive, and going for the eyes regardless, because it doesn't get to grow old and happy if you can't either.

Good for the continued existence of your peers. Bad for everything else.

So I suppose, if you are in a position where a bear is mauling you- metaphorically- hate probably isn't your biggest obstacle right now.

But if the bear is out there somewhere, on the other side of the forest, and you are sitting in a hole somewhere in a stiff rigor of rage and spite and terror, then I think it may be best for you to tell yourself now:

The bear will kill. Killing is in the nature of the bear, and a bear is helpless to change its nature. Knowing the nature of the bear, I will stay away from it, and deter it, and stay away from its path, and I will pity it for the nature it cannot compel itself to resist, and for the wonderful things it will never experience.

I do not need to fear the bear, because I understand its nature. I do not need to hate the bear, because I needn't fear it. All I must accept is that there is a bear, and it is wise to stay away from it.

It's unfortunate that the bear must live this way. It's unfortunate that you share your forest with a bear and not something kinder. But if you cannot change it, and it cannot change itself, then all you can do is accept that it is a bear.

And knowing that: be loud, travel with friends, and carry a big stick.

[deja-ru]

OP I needed your tags when I reblogged this and I hope that's okay. They spoke to me.

[wizardarchetypes]

u think ocd therapy is impossible to do yourself and that it's all too big to start but you can get workbooks or even just try small things.

a lot of my ritual behaviors are "checking"

self-guided ocd exposure therapy can be as simple as resisting the urge to check if your door is locked more than once and sitting with the discomfort until it passes without engaging in any reassurance rituals.

it can look like sending an email and resisting the urge to re-read it over and over again obsessing over your wording, sitting with the discomfort until it passes without engaging in any reassurance rituals.

some of my rituals are also "avoidance"

in which case it can look like checking your email inbox you've been obsessively avoiding because you're anxious about receiving a specific email you don't want to see.

and YEP! ☝️

sitting with the discomfort until it passes without engaging in any reassurance rituals.

[wizardarchetypes]

!!!

it might be hard to believe, but learning distress tolerance for things like "checking" with emails and door locks actually prepared me for the Big Ones like harm and sexual OCD themes.

I think this article from 2007 is a good introduction to the basic concepts of exposures:

Self Directed Treatment for OCD The Irony of Doing the Opposite By Paul R. Munford, Ph.D.        I remember a movie in which one of the char

that SAID, a lot has changed since 2007! the idea that exposure therapy can (or even should) prevent fears from every happening has come into question!

now the conversation about OCD exposure has turned to training distress tolerance:

...rather than aiming for the decline of anxiety (habituation) during exposure, the inhibitory learning approach to ERP teaches people how to be open-minded toward experiencing anxiety and fear when these experiences inevitably show up. Indeed, fear and anxiety (and other emotions in OCD such as disgust or guilt) are universal and even adaptive experiences, not something that need to be “fixed” or gotten rid of. Most importantly, even if they can be unwanted, intense, and distressing, these emotions and thoughts are safe. From an inhibitory learning perspective, fear extinction (and long-term improvement in OCD) depends not only on learning that feared stimuli are safe, but that it is also safe to experience the emotional response that is triggered by these stimuli.

It should be noted that all of the following procedures are still currently being researched. While there is evidence to suggest that they c

And remember at the end of the day I AM NOT a specialist. I am discussing my own OCD journey and referencing the available material on OCD exposures.

I'm not always right, and I can't know what's best for you.

Which is why I haven't recommended any of the old workbooks I've completed, because some of them are old enough that there are better ones to follow that I haven't gotten to trying yet!

I recommend doing your own reading from OCD-aware organizations:

The International OCD Foundation

The mission of the International OCD Foundation is to help those affected by obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and related disorders to li

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder | Made of Millions Foundation

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that causes unwanted intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and mental or physical ritua

[chainofclovers]

Put in the tags the completely finished (whether cancelled or wrapped up on its own terms) TV series that has YOUR perfect ending, however you define that

Please don’t include huge spoilers for the specifics of the endings, and it would also make me happy if people don’t use this to talk about the shows whose endings they hated

[partywithponies]

Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???

[urlocalpyshcopan]

as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name

[brainsforbabyjesus]

for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!

[infamousbrad]

I think I know how this works.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.

[kagedtiger]

Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm

[jayalaw]

What’s the solution then? Or if there’s no solution, should we make things even queerer and more diverse?

[delvinanaris]

Well, I don’t have any good solutions, but I suspect that someone around here might have a suggestion or two…