we have nothing if not belief

Karisa. Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Multi-fandom mess, mood often shifts. Entirely too much in love with all manner of shows, movies, and books. Sam Winchester is my lifeblood. Mostly a pretty positive person. Ravenclaw scatterbrain. Feel free to ask me anything. Have a lovely day! :)

[demigodofhoolemere]

Scarlet Pimpernel memes part 3

[demigodofhoolemere]

Scarlet Pimpernel memes part 2

[demigodofhoolemere]

I come bearing Scarlet Pimpernel memes because I can’t stop thinking about this musical every waking moment and I thought it was very meme-able.

Part 1

[dyk-this-musical-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you know this TV Show Song? #39

I know the song and the show

I know the song but not the show

I know the show but not the song

I may know this

I have never heard this

Remaining time: 6 days 13 hours

[dyk-this-musical-song]

Visit Original Link

Do you know this TV Show Song? #38

I know the song and the show

I know the song but not the show

I know the show but not the song

I may know this

I have never heard this

Remaining time: 6 days 13 hours

[demigodofhoolemere]

Another Narnia vid 💚

[demigodofhoolemere]

Another day, another comment being made online about C.S. Lewis punishing Susan for liking makeup. Insert Ben Affleck smoking here.

[rightasrainee]

I truly cannot express how straightforward this is - allegorically speaking-

*remembers Jack didn't like Narnia being referred to as an allegory*

Okay, what the heck. There are multiple ways to view the "Susan makeup" issue, and people are so good at forgetting that Narnia symbolic and a fairytale, if allegory is off the table, how about we refer to this as a parable?

Let's look at the text, shall we?

"Sir, if I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

"Oh, Susan!..." -The Last Battle, p. 154

I purposely left out the makeup dialogue that comes next because if I let it in here, the reading comprehension famine will strike and no one will get through the post at all. But look at this. What comes first is NOT Susan's "condemnation" for liking makeup. It is that she is "no longer a friend of Narnia."

Have any of your friendships ever changed?

Has anyone ever drifted away from you?

Has anyone ever chosen to put a distance in what used to be a close and supportive relationship and deny that there was closeness? Or belittle what once was?

This is what Lewis is describing here. Susan's vanity (for those sects of Christianity that give them significant weight) aside, the bigger concern is that she has chosen to separate herself from Narnia. Punishment from Aslan nothing; Susan chose to stop believing in Narnia, and by extension, Aslan, Mr. Tumnus, her subjects and kingdom, and her own potential for queendom. Aslan did nothing to preclude or separate Susan from Narnia and from coming to Aslan's country! Susan herself no longer believes in Narnia and at this point in time, would not arrive in Aslan's country anyway!!

Now, as far as the symbolism or parabalic parallels go: Peter comes to mind ("thou shalt deny Me thrice"), maybe even doubting Thomas. But for me, this feels very Old Testament and the Children of Israel. Sometimes they were incredibly on top of their devotion to Jehovah, they called Him Adoni, "my Lord". But other times they were smitten and dragged into slavery because they fell away to false gods and worshipped them. They loved something vain and fleeting and proud and shallow more than they loved God.

Go ahead and re-read that paragraph again, the post isn't going anywhere.

Nowhere does Aslan's love for Susan wane, nor did Jehovah's for His people. This is the entirety of Christianity is that we have a God that came down to be with men, and it is our choice if we will drawn near again unto Him. And so too, is the story of Narnia.

Another huge thing I see missed from the Susan story is how people read it as though it's final and condemning. My brother is quite the C.S. Lewis scholar and he hunted these up for me - excerpts from letters that can be found in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis Vol. 3

"To Marcia Billiard: Magdalene College, Cambridge, 22/2/55 "I am so glad you like the Narnian books. After P. Caspian came the Voyage of the Dawn Treader: then The Silver Chair; then The Horse and his Boy. These have all been published. Next autumn will come The Magician's Nephew, and, the year after, The Last Battle (at least I think that will be the name, but I might change it) which will finish off the series. Peter gets back to Narnia in it. I am afraid Susan does not. Haven't you noticed in the two you have read that she is rather fond of being too grown-up? I am sorry to say that side of her got stronger and she forgot about Narnia."

"To Martin Kilmer: Magdalene College, Cambridge. 22/1/57 "The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end - in her own way."

"To Pauline Bannister: Magdalene College, Cambridge 19 Feb. 1960, "Dear Pauline Bannister, "I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan's ever getting to Aslan's country, but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?"

Now, the "too grown-up" rhetoric is used again in The Last Battle, which I would like to point out is not about maturity - never is maturity the issue, it's the unbelief. We might call it the "keeping up" kind of culture, or the "how others see me". Susan was a queen in Narnia, a Daughter of Eve, endowed with her own wisdom and power. But rather than grow in her talents and embrace these strengths, she wanted to be pretty and popular like everyone else. Like how the Children of Israel fell to worshipping Baal and Ashtoreth like their neighbors - they and Susan were "keeping up with the Jonses".

And yet, Christ came to call the Children of Israel back to their covenant! He didn't give up on them, and neither did Lewis! There is time for her! And perhaps, she will. Ultimately, it is Susan's choice!

Now, as to why the stories end that way, I mean, isn't it fair? They started this way! They started with Edmund with a hard and unbeliving heart who wanted power and to be liked and favored more than he wanted to see something beautiful. It hits its midpoint with Eustace who is also scientific and unbelieving and has to be taught in rough dragon skin before he's humble enough to let Aslan tear it off of him! There are stories already in Narnia of unbelievers or "not yet friends" who turned themselves around. Who saw and felt things and found them to be good and let Narnia back in. Wouldn't it be fitting for the story to end with this same journey to be taken again? And don't come for me and tell me it's different. Edmund also saw and experienced Narnia and cast it aside as unimportant next to Jadis' favor. It's not Jadis, but Susan has let other priorities overshadow her belief. The story starts and ends the same way - how can you be mad about that? They end with possibility and an invitation to repent and accept all you are capable of becoming!

My brother and I actually talked about this (seeing how Jack invited Pauline to try, we thought he wouldn't object to us to at least starting the story). The Disney/Fox Narnia adaptations are some of the best book-to-film adaptations to exist, and we talked about how easily this open door Lewis intended could be shot.

The reason that the rest of the family (even Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie) make it to Aslan's country is that they've died in a train accident. Susan did not die with her family; she was not with them (another reason she's not in Aslan's country). So we talked about how moving it could be if the shot panned from the beautiful meadows and lilies of Aslan's country to a less glorious, but still green and lily-clad cemetery, and Anna Popplewell kneeling in front of a cenotaph or a grave marker with the names of her parents, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy.

And she would be crying. Grieving. Her whole family died in one horrible accident. And suddenly her invitations and lipstick are very small comfort next to the absence of her family that she did love but didn't give space to for so long that she's ashamed of herself.

Crying, kneeling in front of the grave. Wishing she could tell them herself that she was sorry. How much she'll miss them. What she wouldn't give for another day with them. Another year. Another life-time!

And a kind, gentle voice from just off-screen. "Why do you mourn, little one?"

And Susan looks up to someone just beyond the grave marker, out of the camera's view. We can maybe see clergy robes, or plain trousers - the furthest up the camera can see are aged hands - not gnarly and old, but aged and worn, caring and careful.

"There was a train accident. And I shall ever see my family again." (Anna Popplewell is selling this performance because she's a treasure, mind you) "What have I done? Where was I all this time? Peter, Ed, Lou...where have you gone? Whatever shall I do?"

"There," says the man with the aged hands, "Cry your tears and dry them. All is not lost."

"But all is lost! I have lost them all! My parents and brothers and sister have all died! Death is the end!"

"Is it now?"

"I suppose you've come to tell me that it isn't." (bitterly, hopefully but afraid to hope) and she looks away from him.

"Dear, gentle Susan," one of the aged hands reaches down to lift her face back into the sunlight, rather than hanging low in the shadow of her misery)

Susan startles and stares. Gentle Susan - Susan, the Gentle, she's been called this before.

Something inside her stirs.

"Sir, have you come to tell me that it isn't?"

Camera cuts up to a kind face, aged, lined, the face of Liam Nisan and a warm, golden voice that some part of Susan still knows.

"Have we met before, sir?"

Liam Nisan smiles, "Come, Susan, we have much to discuss."

End scene.

Anyway, all of this to say that I will take the Susan slander no longer! This is what Christianity is for is to reach out to those who have left God and invite them back. This is the thesis of Christianity, of a God who condescended to close the gap between mortality and divinity. And I will be darned if we let this whole freaking point of the story get forgotten.

And if you don't see Narnia as a religious story...

Friend, you have no idea what you're missing out on.

[demigodofhoolemere]

You, you get it!!!!!!

[justalurkr]

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.

The Matilda Effect became standard terminology. Scholars used it to examine how credit is assigned, how authors are listed, who receives awards, who gets left out.

[chocolatepot]

This is an important concept, but the piece is written by AI.

There are a number of tells, but this is an excellent example to talk about em-dashes, which people often either take as permanent AI tells or run the other way and say "humans use em-dashes and that's why AI does, too! they're not tells!" Both are kind of right and both are kind of wrong.

What you'll see if you look closely at this text is that it ONLY uses em-dashes. Every time it needs to put in some kind of break or set off some text, it goes for the em-dash. There are no phrases in parentheses. There are commas, but only in places where the absolute rule is to use a comma (like in a series, for instance). There is one colon, again placed where the absolute rule is to use at (at the top of a list). Whenever there's an option, where a human writer would be actively making a choice about what punctuation to use, the AI defaults to an em-dash.

On top of that, look at the content. The AI bot people are obsessed with feminism, ironically. I suspect it's because very basic feminist narratives about women pushing back against barriers or doing something heroic are popular and gets shared widely. So, first of all, you should be on your guard when you see a "what this woman did CHANGED HISTORY!" kind of piece. (I wonder if the twitter/tumblr trend of BUCKLE UP history posts has affected the AI ...) And then you should check out the specific claims.

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

I can't find this anywhere else. The paper "The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science" doesn't talk about photos! The Wikipedia page doesn't talk about photos! This Smithsonian article doesn't talk about photos! Her piece on her career in Writing and Revising the Disciplines (2002) (good read) DOES mention photos, in that she got the Mount Holyoke archivist to send her a few from the 1880s showing women doing scientific work as a nice illustration that "epitomized" what she was already aware of.

Rossiter started with textual primary sources that documented women as named individuals contributing to scientific discoveries. The idea of her being confused by photos is a hallucination.

Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There's definitely something to be said about the framing of this bit as shocking!!! but since I'm talking about facts and sources, it's clear to me that the AI recognized the botany-Wellesley connection from the paper but could not parse that the reference was to a female botanist who taught at Wellesley. There is also nothing in the paper about Vermont geologists, so I have no idea where the AI got that; I would suspect it's another hallucination attempting to create a pattern from the first reference.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing. Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams. But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

Again, back to the mysterious photographs. But the rest of this text is an issue as well: what Rossiter describes in the paper is not a complete absence of these women in any official documentation, but that these women were amply documented and known to be working within the scientific community and yet did not receive public credit or awards. It's not a complete smothering out, but a sort of complacent back-burnering, which is too nuanced for the AI to be able to handle when told to "write a post about the Matilda effect that will get engagement on social media". She didn't prove that discoveries attributed to male authorship actually had women involved and only she knew their names: she collected many stories that people already knew of overlooked/underplayed female scientists and put them together to say, "This is a pattern and we should have a name for it." Some of her examples were even recent enough (1970s-80s) that she was able to point to a feminist backlash.

And again ironically, the AI itself engages in the Matilda Effect by presenting this whole thing as utter silence -> Rossiter gets curious -> the case is blown open. Rossiter actually refers to the work of other female historians and social scientists! In fact, she started this line of research after noticing the female biographies in American Men of Science when her housemate, Cynthia Thompson, recommended that she keep track of them.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased: Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick. Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize. Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed. And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Rossiter did not claim to be rediscovering these women. She refers to Franklin and Meitner as having been famously denied credit, in fact! Meitner specifically is "one of the best-known examples of the phenomenon". Stevens she uses as one in the list of examples in the paper, and Payne-Gaposchkin actually just gets a reference at the end that's doesn't even tell you the specific field of scientific study. (To be fair, there may be more about them in her other publications.) This was not about Badass Historian of Science Tells the Establishment What's What. Everybody knew about the concept of female scientists being publicly ignored as collaborators by 1993 — and women's history as a field had been around for 15-20 years. She was not working in a vacuum where nobody else thought that it was important to study these topics until she forced them to see the light.

Please, please, everyone, be on the lookout for bad feminist history written by AI. If you're not with me on the tells and hallucinations here, then at least be on the lookout for bad "feminist" history regardless of the source. If it sounds like it's sensationalizing, it probably is.

[thememedaddy]

[jonjjja]

my biggest desire: to be seen

my biggest fear: to be seen

[2colde]

much like a beautiful horse i like salt and roaming freely

[demigodofhoolemere]

Another day, another comment being made online about C.S. Lewis punishing Susan for liking makeup. Insert Ben Affleck smoking here.

[demigodofhoolemere]

.

I’m sure it will hit at a later time but losing Sam Neill doesn’t even seem real. Feels like that’s not a thing that can happen. I don’t like this headline. :(

[incorrectdead50squartet]

Sparky falls through the ceiling, landing near Jinx Sparky: Hey, Jinx! Jinx: Hey, Sparky! Jinx: …that hurt.

[incorrectdead50squartet]

Frankie: Why were you up yesterday until 3am? Sparky: How did you know I was up until 3am? Smudge: We could hear you clapping to the FRIENDS intro every 25 minutes.

[iamnowhomefree]

Playbill’s 30 Day Song Challenge:

Day twenty-four: a song that cheers you up

The Duration, The Hello Girls

[iamnowhomefree]

M’s Challenge, Day Four:

A show you didn’t expect to love as much as you do.