I found Bloody Mary to be a funny crackship at first but I’ll be real, the compulsive desire to ship Grace with someone is wearing on me. In that it directly conflicts with a big element of Grace’s character. He didn’t have traditional close relationships with other people, but he still loved humanity enough to save it. Like, was it not enough that he loved his students? Was it not enough that he loves science? Why are we extending his narrative purpose with sad wet markiplier. Stop that. He is long enough.
Modern Liu Qingge would be a full time invasive species hunter because he’s just that good at it, which is fortunate since it accommodates his nap schedule. He wakes up at 3 am to get the early rising animals, sleeps 7-11, meets Shen Yuan for lunch at 12, sleeps 2-5, and hunts until 1. He and Shen Yuan live together since it’s hard for Shen Yuan to take care of an apartment by himself, so for a lot of his naps he crawls into Shen Yuan’s lap and get used as a table while Shen Yuan does editing.
Some women are conditioned to be fragile and weak, and to believe that it's a sin to outperform a man. Her feminism would involve allowing women to be strong.
Some women are expected to be strong at times when they can't. Her feminism would involve reassuring her that it's okay to not be strong.
Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're too stupid to ever amount to anything. Their disability activism would involve reassuring them that they're capable.
Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're smart and gifted, and are expected to live up to impossible standards. Their disability activism would involve allowing them to fail, make mistakes, be stupid, etc.
Some children are constantly reminded "you're the child, I'm the adult" in order to deny their autonomy. Their youth rights activism would involve treating them like an adult at times when they feel ready for it.
Some children are treated like adults in order to justify increased expectations or to downplay abuse against them. Their youth rights activism would involve allowing them to be a child.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to oppression. Each individual person's experience is different. Whatever trauma is caused by their oppression, the activism should focus on undoing it.
I'm doing artfight once again BUT I'm in a much better mental space AND have much more time this year if any of my characters interest you feel free to attack!!
Okay all of the fanart and how great everyone is making project hail Mary seem I bought the book cause I'm not super into movies and I'm going to have a wine and book read day literally haven't been so excited about a book in over a year
Just heard a cis guy in a video essay say in reference to a dating show saying there's a taboo around virginity
"I think what they mean to say is a stigma, not necessarily "Taboo", because I feel like if you've lost virginity there's nothing taboo about that, but maybe a societal stigma"
Like how does over-produced dating show slop somehow be more aware of social taboos and stigmas than YOU someone who is criticizing the show through a researched and edited video essay.
That's probably the most cis male centered thing I've heard this year.
"there's nothing taboo about losing your virginity"
There IS a taboo around losing your virginity but there SHOULDN'T be.
and that's the issue, the ignorance of the amount of hate, fetishization, disgust and dehumanization women face around being or not being a virgin, isn't just "Maybe a societal stigma"
Because it's not taboo that I'm not a virgin I'm just:
A slut, whore, a hoe, run throw, loose, tainted, a hussy, a skank, easy, used/used goods, low value.
So while I was glad to see a video essay criticizing a dating show where the gimmick is about all the people being virgins,
underplaying how serious or being ignorant of the fact that losing your virginity is BOTH a TABOO and a STIGMA for women is just stupid and dangerous.
Because honor killing exists, virginity testing exists, the sexual market value exists
FUCK IF I WAS HUMAN TRAFFICKED I WOULD BE WORTH MORE CAUSE IM A VIRGIN !!!
Like yeah I understand losing your virginity for a man is really important and there's a stigma if you haven't and you're likely to face bullying and ridicule from those around you and feel dehumanized.
But that is different than women being fucking murdered.
So yeah if you erased half the earth then I'd agree that
"losing your virginity isn't necessarily a taboo but maybe a societal stigma"
ALLRIGHT!!!!! my 1k celebration you guys voted for!!!! a “kiss challenge” but instead, its ‘everyone gets a turn with transmigrated SY’ challenge hehe. (they might still kiss..)
i would appreciate if you’d comment to let me know whether you want him in his original form or if I should make him a new form to cater to all the peaklords(+plus bingge and zzl’s) tastes~
Thank you for 1k! I heart this fandom you are all wonderful perverts that I care for dearly <3
Oh woah you made the gross misogynistic guy a fat bald sweaty man? Should we throw a party. Should we call everyone. Should we throw you into space with a cannon.
Extremely face blind Yue Qingyuan being surprised by Shen Jiu after he got a dramatic haircut, but he doesn’t immediately recognize Shen Jiu and tries to politely explain to this incredibly flirtatious stranger that he has a husband. Shen Jiu is stuck between being happy Yue Qingyuan is so opposed to cheating on him, and upset that his own husband and childhood friend didn’t recognize him.
#the amount of times I've walked past my mom while looking for her in the grocery store cause she was wearing a different hoodie that wasn't her fav one
Shen Yuan tattoo artist and Shen Jiu Head disciple almost peak lord (Little fragment of the idea of my next fic :D)
Shen Yuan hesitated to continue and waited for Shen Jiu to calm down, after a few moments passed, he only heard a soft murmur from the man.
“do it.”
He then began carving his design, the only thing that could be heard was the sound of the needle piercing his skin, he didn’t feel a thing thanks to the qi usage of the man.
At first Shen Jiu was wary of him, only allowing this reckless idea of him because he knew that if this man even had the mere idea of overstepping, he could kill him with a flicker of his finger.
But he didn’t.
Instead of the normal lustful hands of men that he was used to, they were careful, they were hands of an artist; hands that Shen Jiu had seen before at qing jing, except that these hands were making art in his body.
Shen Jiu turned his head slightly to watch curiously the whole process
After a few hours the branding mark was nowhere to be seen, as if it had disappeared completely.
As if it was never there to begin with.
Relief washed over him.
He had always wanted to get rid of it, he tore, scratched and ripped his flesh, yet the result was the same.
He always healed, no scars remained anymore after advancing a certain level of cultivation; all scars except those who were old and deep enough that even his own body couldn't erase them.
Only advancing to a certain point would allow it, something that Shen Jiu could never dream of.
Something impossible due to his crippled cultivation.
He thought he would have to live with this reminder for the rest of his life.
‘Once a slave always a slave’
The words that Qiu Janluo said to him echoed in his mind.
He felt a cold liquid being applied to his back.
“We’re done!” Shen Yuan said with enthusiasm while pulling out a mirror.
On his back instead of the nine that he was accustomed to see, there were beautiful blooming lotus flowers surrounded by vines with thorns.
Lotus flowers represent the human spirit to overcome adversity, as Shen Yuan said before.
He breathed out a barely audible laugh.
Whether it was intentional or not, the important part was that he no longer had to wake up and see this part of the past that should have remain buried.
It was a Tuesday in 1981 when the San Francisco police kicked in the door.
Inside the small apartment, they expected to find a hardened criminal. They expected a drug kingpin. They expected resistance.
Instead, they found a 57-year-old waitress in an apron.
The air in the apartment smelled sweet, thick with chocolate and something earthier. On the kitchen counter, cooling on wire racks, were 54 dozen brownies.
The police officers began bagging the evidence. They confiscated nearly 18 pounds of marijuana. They handcuffed the woman, whose name was Mary Jane Rathbun.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look guilty.
She looked at the officers, smoothed her apron, and reportedly said, "I thought you guys were coming."
She was booked into the county jail. The headlines wrote themselves. A grandmother running a pot bakery. It seemed like a joke to the legal system, a quirky local news story about an older woman behaving badly.
But Mary wasn't baking for fun. And she certainly wasn't baking for profit.
To understand why Mary risked her freedom, you have to understand the silence of the early 1980s.
San Francisco was gripping the edge of a cliff. A mysterious illness was sweeping through the city, specifically targeting young men. Later, the world would know it as AIDS. But in those early days, it was just a death sentence that no one wanted to talk about.
Families were disowning their sons. Landlords were evicting tenants. Even doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the fear of the unknown, would sometimes leave food trays outside hospital doors, afraid to breathe the same air as their patients.
Men in their twenties were wasting away in sterile rooms, dying alone.
Mary knew what it felt like to lose a child.
Years earlier, in 1974, her daughter Peggy had been killed in a car accident. Peggy was only 22. The loss had hollowed Mary out, leaving a space in her heart that nothing seemed to fill.
When the judge sentenced Mary for that first arrest, he ordered her to perform 500 hours of community service. He likely thought the manual labor would teach her a lesson.
He sent her to the Shanti Project and San Francisco General Hospital.
It was a mistake that would change American history.
Mary walked into the AIDS wards when others were walking out. She didn't wear a hazmat suit. She didn't hold her breath. She saw rows of young men who looked like ghosts—skeletal, in pain, and terrified.
She saw "her kids."
She began mopping floors and changing sheets. But soon, she noticed something the doctors were missing. The harsh medications the men were taking caused violent nausea. They couldn't eat. They were starving to death as much as they were dying of the virus.
Mary knew a secret about the brownies she had been arrested for.
She knew they settled the stomach. She knew they brought back the appetite. She knew they could help a dying man sleep for a few hours without pain.
So, she made a choice.
She went back to her kitchen. She fired up the oven. She started mixing batter, not to sell, but to save.
Every morning, Mary would bake. She lived on a fixed income, surviving on Social Security checks that barely covered her rent. Yet, she spent nearly every dime on flour, sugar, and butter.
The most expensive ingredient—the cannabis—was donated. Local growers heard what she was doing. They began dropping off pounds of product at her door, free of charge.
She packed the brownies into a basket and took the bus to the hospital.
She walked room to room. She sat by the bedsides of men who hadn't seen their own mothers in years. She held their hands. She told them jokes. And she gave them brownies.
"Here, baby," she would say. "Eat this. It'll help."
And it did.
Nurses watched in amazement as patients who hadn't eaten in days began to ask for food. The constant retching stopped. The mood on the ward shifted from despair to a quiet sort of comfort.
Mary Jane Rathbun became "Brownie Mary."
For over a decade, this was her life. She baked roughly 600 brownies a day. She went through 50 pounds of flour a week. She became the mother to a generation of lost boys.
She washed their pajamas. She attended their funerals. She held them while they took their last breaths.
She did this while the government declared a "War on Drugs."
By the early 1990s, the political climate was hostile. Politicians were competing to see who could be "tougher" on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences were locking people away for decades.
In 1992, at the age of 70, Mary was arrested again.
This time, the stakes were lethal. She was charged with felonies. The district attorney looked at her rap sheet and saw a repeat offender. He threatened to send her to prison.
One prosecutor famously whispered to a colleague that he was going to "kick this old lady's ass."
They underestimated who they were dealing with.
They thought they were prosecuting a drug dealer. In reality, they were attacking the most beloved woman in San Francisco.
When the news broke that Brownie Mary was facing prison, the city erupted.
It wasn't just the activists who were angry. It was the doctors. It was the nurses. It was the parents who had watched Mary care for their dying sons when the government did nothing.
Mary turned her trial into a pulpit.
She arrived at court not as a defendant, but as a grandmother standing her ground. The media swarmed her. Reporters asked if she was afraid of prison. They asked if she would stop baking if they let her go.
Mary looked into the cameras, her voice gravelly and firm.
"If the narcs think I'm gonna stop baking brownies for my kids with AIDS," she said, "they can go fuck themselves in Macy's window."
The quote ran in newspapers across the country.
The court didn't stand a chance.
Testimony poured in. Doctors from San Francisco General Hospital wrote letters explaining that Mary’s brownies were medically necessary. Patients testified that she was an angel of mercy.
The charges were dropped.
Mary walked out of the courthouse a free woman. But she didn't go home to rest. She realized that her personal victory wasn't enough. As long as the law was broken, her "kids" were still in danger.
She needed to change the law.
August 25 was declared "Brownie Mary Day" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It was a nice gesture, but Mary wanted policy, not plaques.
She teamed up with fellow activist Dennis Peron. Together, they opened the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club—the first public dispensary in the United States. It was a safe haven where patients could get their medicine without fear of arrest.
But Mary wanted more. She wanted the state of California to acknowledge the truth.
She campaigned for Proposition 215. She traveled the state, despite her failing health. She spoke in her simple, direct way. She didn't talk about liberties or economics. She talked about compassion. She talked about pain.
She forced voters to look at the issue through the eyes of a grandmother.
In 1996, Proposition 215 passed. California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana.
It was a domino effect. Because one woman refused to let her "kids" suffer, the public perception of cannabis shifted. The Economist later noted that Mary was single-handedly responsible for changing the national conversation.
She never got rich.
She had always joked that if legalization ever happened, she would sell her recipe to Betty Crocker and buy a Victorian house for her patients to live in.
She never sold the recipe. She never bought the house.
Mary Jane Rathbun died in 1999, at the age of 77. She passed away in a nursing home, poor in money but rich in legacy.
Today, over 30 states have legalized medical marijuana. Millions of people use it to manage pain, seizures, and nausea.
Most of them have never heard of Mary.
They don't know that their legal prescription exists because a waitress in San Francisco decided that the law was wrong and her heart was right.
They don't know about the 600 brownies a day.
They don't know about the thousands of hospital visits.
Mary didn't set out to be a hero. She told the Chicago Tribune years before she died, "I didn't go into this thinking I would be a hero."
She was just a mother who had lost her daughter, trying to help boys who had lost their way.
She proved that authority doesn't always equal morality.
She proved that sometimes, the most patriotic thing a citizen can do is break a bad law.
Every August, a few people in San Francisco still celebrate Brownie Mary Day. But her true memorial isn't a date on a calendar.
It is found in every oncology ward where a patient finds relief. It is found in every dispensary door that opens without fear.
It is found in the simple, quiet courage of anyone who sees suffering and refuses to look away.
Mary taught us that you don't need a law degree to change the world. You don't need millions of dollars. You don't need political office.
Sometimes, all you need is a mixing bowl, an oven, and enough love to tell the world to get out of your way.
Sources: New York Times Obituary (1999), "Brownie Mary" Rathbun. San Francisco Chronicle Archives (1992, 1996). History.com, "The History of Medical Marijuana." Weird Everything, FB december 12, 2025
I'd be only too happy to do that. I was suspicious to start, too. It seemed a bit on the nose to have the weed brownie grandma named "Mary Jane," but also, that's a very common combination in a certain place and time, so I thought it was worth the extra effort.
What I did was find sources that made the claim (in this case, that a woman named Mary Jane was a medicinal marijuana activist in California, USA in the 1980s and 90s.) I checked the dates to get some certainty those sources aren't AI slop, then checked that the sources are generally reliable.
Then I followed useful details about the place and time, and other people involved, to explore it more fully.
The first thing I did was search for "Brownie Mary" and see if that turned anything up at all. It turned up a LOT of results. Predictably, some of them were recipes, but not all of them.
Next up, I checked sources and dates. Wikipedia can be dodgy for academic use, but their policy on LLM-generated input is very clear: they don't want slop. I started by reading that page and then went on to read others.
The Atlas Obscura article is from 2018. I found another one from SFWeekly from 2017.
Both of those are decent sources - Atlas Obscura gets a High factual reporting rate from MediaBiasFactCheck, and while MBFC doesn't have a rating for SFWeekly, the verbiage in that article is very close to what GastroObscura has. (Also to what the post itself has, right down to the choice of pull quote.)
Now, we can stop there and feel pretty confident that articles published before the wide availability of LLMs are not, in fact, LLM generated.
...or we can go deeper, and run this all the way back to source.
I spotted references to a Chicago Tribune imterview of Mary Jane Rathbun, published in 1993.
My search string of "Chicago Tribune 1993 Mary Jane Rathbun" hit it in the top 3 results. That article includes some fun new details: she wore a cannabis leaf shaped pendant to her trial!
She also objected to being portrayed as a cuddly grandma up against The Man, so I must retract my flippant tags, above.
The evidence now strongly points to Brownie Mary being a real woman who really went to court for giving AIDS patients weed brownies. But can we get closer? I've now seen several mentions of a 1980 attempt at convicting her too.
The articles have mentioned Sonoma County and a nonprofit called the Shanti Project, so let's hook onto that and see what we get.
Searching for "Mary Jane Rathbun Sonoma County 1980" gets me an article from a law firm; that mentions the prosecuting attorney by name, and points to a book: Lust for Justice: The Radical Life & Law of J. Tony Serra, by Paulette Frankl. It even has an excerpt!
We can run the book down too, just for fun (now we have a primary source.) My favorite used book site has a copy for $1. Amazon gives a view of the back cover, too:
...wow. I should see if my library has that!
The excerpt on the site has a mention of a candelight vigil held for her death in 1999. It took some hunting past things I'd already read and a bunch of shops giving written tributes, but I found a news report about that, too.
There's a lot of information out there, and it's worth digging into. Otherwise it's altogether too easy to think something real and worth knowing is just another bit of slop.
Au where Liu Qingge transmigrates into a crab when he dies in the caves and hes stuck on Qing Jing peak.
He starts fighting people that visit Shen Qingqiu when he doesn't want to be visited to pay him back for trying to save him.
"Shidi have you always had a... crab on your peak?"
"Shut up about my crab cant you see hes better behaved than you are!?"
Spiritual crab follows Shen Qingqiu around everywhere, even to the trial, where out of anger he cultivates a human form that very second, the form being Liu Fucking Qingge, who defends Shen Qingqiu from the counts of his not so murder at least.
