NASA
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Claire Keane
Today's Document
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Show & Tell
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Peter Solarz
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
we're not kids anymore.
sheepfilms
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Andulka
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almost home
tannertan36
⁂
seen from Greece
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@deviltemper12
I turn to Ares.
Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK
⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon
Reblog so she lives forever.
Somewhere in my notes in the last few days I saw someone add some tags that I’ve been thinking about ever since. I wish I could find them again (or that I’d just saved their post at the time) because I think they made a lot of sense.
They were talking about how fanfic is becoming more and more mainstream while still remaining largely transgressive. It’s such an interesting dichotomy to think about!
On the one hand, you have sites like AO3 and realities like widespread high speed internet access being more and more accessible to larger and larger groups of people. This makes it incredibly easy for anyone at all to find and read fanfic.
On the other hand, you have the roots of fanfic. It was born out of marginalized groups such as women, people of colour, and members of the queer community deciding to take the stories that had been aimed at a largely male, white, heterosexual audience and inverting them into something they could enjoy and relate to. To this day, fanfic is a place where people write the kinds of stories that don’t get made into movies and TV shows. The kinds of stories that don’t get published or end up on the New York Times bestseller list.
Fanfic used to be written and shared in secret. People used to hide it. People still do hide the fact that they read or write it. But it’s becoming something that more and more people are becoming more and more aware of.
So now there’s a spotlight starting to shine on fanfic. People who aren’t looking for transgressive works are finding them where they always were. People who think the status quo is fine are getting upset when they enter a place where the status quo is constantly being upended.
The tags on that post that I can’t find made the point that popular media is curated and sanitized and stripped of most of its controversy in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. But that also makes that audience expect all media to be curated and sanitized in the same way. When they encounter the messy, controversial, ugly, radical, difficult things that people write in fanfic, they’re unprepared.
Fanfic isn’t big media. Fanfic authors aren’t being edited and filtered and polished - and nor are their works. The clash between the expectations of people new to fanfic and accustomed to popular media and the realities of what fanfic is and what it’s being written for - that’s part of this struggle that fandom is going through right now. It’s been going on since the beginning of course, but it’s getting louder every year.
I’m still thinking my way through this, but it really does make a lot of sense to me. If those were your tags, please let me know so I can credit you with the ideas at the core of this post.
And if you have any ideas for how we as fans can better introduce the newbies to the culture and expectations in fandom, I’d love to hear it. The better we can guide people into our space, the better they’ll fit in when they join it.
While I’m not entirely sure how, here are a few what ideas. If you’re coming into fanfic new, here is what you need to know. Perhaps other folks can think of more diplomatic ways to frame these thoughts.
Fandom has historically been dominated by the weird. Weird people, weird stories. That isn’t a bad thing. A lot of folks in fandom wear weird as a badge of honour, something we reclaimed from bullies and other abusers who slung the word and related ones at us. We are not normal and do not seek to be normal. If that idea bothers you, you are still welcome, but know that you are a guest. A lot of folks in fandom have been burned by aggressive normalcy, and start baring teeth when it intrudes into our spaces.
The author is dead. All this means is that the original canon author or authors can tell you their interpretation of the story, but they cannot control your own interpretations or imagination: their interpretation is no more or less important than anyone else’s. Something being noncompliant with canon does not make it badly-written.
Alternate universes exist. If someone wants to write characters from a serious crime drama in a sitcom, they are allowed to do that. If someone wants to explore what would happen if that horrific mass murderer was redeemed or never evil, they are allowed to do that. If someone just really likes dragons and wants to write about everyone being a dragon, they are allowed to do that.
If you write fanfic, you are also an author, so you are also dead. Once you release your ideas into the wild, other people can and will do weird things with them. The sooner you accept that, the better.
You will find porn of it if you go looking. If you don’t, some folks will take that as a challenge and go make some. As long as good-faith efforts are made to keep out people who shouldn’t or don’t want to see it, there is nothing wrong with this.
A canon being made for kids and teens does not mean that all sections of the fandom are for kids and teens. Adults can be into works for the younger set, and as long as there are clear boundaries between work that’s appropriate for kids and work that isn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and absolutely nothing wrong with adult or dark works based on those stories.
Some people will really hate your favourite characters. Some people will think your favourite pairing is gross, or boring, or that the characters would be better off with someone else. Some people will think that show or game or book that got you through the roughest moments of your life is absolute trash. And that’s okay. Not everyone has to like your favourite things.
Someone writing dark stories about terrible things happening to your favourite characters, even dark stories that may mirror some trauma you’ve been through, are not writing about you. They’re not. It is none of your business why they’re writing it. Their only duty to you is to make sure you can avoid their work if you want to. Again, the sooner you accept this, the better off you’ll be.
It’s okay if you want to write something dark and depraved. Lots of people do, and if it’s weird, well, fandom has historically been dominated by the weird.
It’s okay if you want to write nothing but fluff.
It’s okay, no matter what you want to write.
Just be courteous and tag your work. Even if all you want to tag it with is “this may contain dark topics.”
Welcome.
This feels related to a post I saw a while back about how so much of fandom is rooted in neuro divergence. The hyper fixation, the “squeeing”, the encyclopedic knowledge. And how, as fandom gets more and more mainstream, those hallmarks of being a Fan get tagged as *cringey*
Idk. Makes you think.
I love almost every point here, but if there’s one thing I would tell new fans, it’s this:
Most fanfic is straight.
These are the best hard numbers I have (with multi/other including all fics labeled as more than one of m/m, f/m, and f/f along with ones labeled as multi/other):
AO3 is the gay porn bookstore, so AO3 is the site that cares about:
Being free from corporate overlords
Not monetizing your data in creepy ways
Minute and detailed kink labeling
Protecting the freaky content
If you hate Bad Kinks, that’s fine. Just know that you will never get the kind of labeling AO3 has from the people who pander to the mainstream. If you want to get rid of The Bad Stuff, the kind of websites you’ll end up with are a sea of nigh unsearchable het, like Wattpad. And the same kinks will be there. They just won’t be labeled clearly.
People imagine that fandom is mostly queer because their own bubble is, because queer stuff sticks in their mind more as anomalous, making it seem more frequent than it really is, and because the only places that label clearly are the queer ones.
If you want to tear down the places with queer+freaky content, you will end up tearing down the only places that protect queer content at all.
No, literally no one missed that. For you, the big thing is underage. For someone else, it’s RPF existing at all. For someone else, it’s rape-as-kink.
I reiterate: If you hate Bad Kinks, that’s fine. But AO3 looks how it does because it’s opposed to censorship. A site less opposed to censorship would also be less into this type of metadata and would have less clear labeling.
Perhaps Wattpad’s terms of service would be more to your taste.
Perhaps Wattpad’s terms of service would be more to your taste.
The politest way to tell somebody to go to hell has been found
Why does everyone hate on Wattpad so much? There’s a lot of good fanfics and original stories and I don’t understand why people here have such a big problem with that app. I know there are also shitty fanfics or rude people, but why hate on a whole community because some people are assholes?
Why do I hate Wattpad? It’s not because of the content or the users or any fake nonsense about lower quality. AO3 has plenty of incompetent writing and excitable teens. It’s not because of the community at all!
I hate Wattpad because the site is designed to only show the top 1k recent/popular works in a tag and encourage hustle culture and monetizing of fanfic. I hate them because their Terms of Service are a pile of vague bullshit designed to let them bully the freaks while ignoring equally explicit art by more mainstream users who make them more money.
Wattpad’s rules encourage writers to mislabel their content so that it can fly under the radar rather than labeling it clearly so that readers can make informed choices, as AO3′s policies encourage. Wattpad’s censorship makes their readers less safe. Their profit motive makes their less mainstream readers especially less safe.
That is what I am suggesting when I tell people to go back to Wattpad:
That they prioritize virtue signalling over reality.
That they do not care about how censorship affects minorities.
That they are mainstream.
I’ve relied on Ao3 during really hard times in my life, and I use it everyday because not only is it a safe place where I can find what I want to read, I can post my works and tag appropriately to allow readers to read my fanfic should they choose to do so based on how I tagged it. Everyone knows I don’t own anything in whatever fandom I’m writing in, the characters aren’t mine, but the story I’m telling is, my opinion is, maybe you don’t like it, maybe you don’t agree with it, but no matter what I’ve written, I have never received hate because the people reading chose to read my work and knew what they were getting in to because I used the appropriate tags and warnings. I don’t fear someone else making money off of me, I don’t have ads popping up every 2 chapters. I’ve tried other fanfic sites, and not only are they more complicated to use, they aren’t as accessible, comprehensive, or as easy to understand. I may have never started posting my own content without Ao3 and a large queer community that was weird in a way I understood, connected with, and couldn’t find in mainstream media.
There’s this fic on AO3 that, according to my history page, I have visited 176 times. Which means I alone am responsible for 176 hits on that fic. I commented on some of the chapters, but only a few, because I feel like a stalker when I comment every week. I gave it kudos, but I can only give it one, even though it’s one of my favorites.
So just remember, when you’re looking at that hit count and wondering why you don’t have that same number of kudos (divided by the number of chapters, because each one of those also counts as a hit), it might be because some people out there love your fic. They read it when they’re feeling down. They open it in the waiting room at the doctors office, or in the lonesome dark of night. They turn to it in celebration when they did something right. They open it over and over so they can send the link to their friends, or just to revisit the characters that they love. They checked it ten times in one day, hoping that you had updated.
A disparity between hits and kudos does not mean that your readers didn’t like your fic, or that they were too lazy to hit the kudos button. It means that some of them came back, and there’s nothing that makes me happier about my writing than that.
Story is wild
Little girl was part of a county fair agro-educational program where they raise an animal for a few months and at the end it’s slaughtered. Supposed to teach them about the economics of farming and stuff.
But the little girl loved her goat so much she was crying on the day her goat was supposed to be taken away, so her mom sent the county fair people an email saying “I’ll pay for the goat and any expenses. We’ve had several deaths in the family in the past year, I don’t wanna take away one more thing my little girl loves.” Technically the goat had already been sold at auction, so the mom was on the hook for about $1000, only about $70 of which would have been profit for the county fair.
The county fair people were irate and got law enforcement involved, over this “breach of contract”. They literally got a fucking judge to sign a search warrant, authorizing them to go to this little girl’s house and search every room and every cabinet or box “large enough to contain a small goat”. The sheriff’s deputies seized the goat, and whoever they gave it to immediately slaughtered it, though they were supposed to wait until some kind of agreement had been worked out.
In the county fair’s initial email correspondence with the girl’s mother, they made it clear that they were pissed off because the story of the little girl who loved her goat was circulating on social media making them look bad, and they felt the girl needed to be taught a lesson about keeping your promises or whatever. So they refused the mother’s offer to pay for it, and insisted they get the goat. Even if it meant sending the fucking cops into her house lmao.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-30/goat-slaughter-shasta-county-fair
the congressman who bought the goat didn’t have any objections to the family saving the goat from slaughter either! it’s fucking insane that the cops were so eager to play act their swat commando fantasies that they played stooge to the benefit of no one except some self important local organizers!
Alternate link, LAtimes locks their stuff behind paywalls sometimes
Don’t forget the part where the goat wasn’t where they had a warrant to search, so they drove 500 miles, leaving the area they have legal jurisdiction in, then searched a farm they didn’t have a warrant for ans seized the goat. The fair then had the goat slaughtered, even though a court had ordered them to keep it alive until ownership was resolved and despite the fact that both potential owners of the goat had decided to keep it alive.
They broke multiple laws in order to “teach” a little girl the “lesson” that “everybody has to follow the rules”.
I sure hope all of the complaints sent to Shasta District Fair CEO Melanie Silva, whose decisions these were and continues to defend her actions, are polite and don’t waste too much ink. I’m certain nobody would take advantage of the fact that the Sasha District Fair and Event Center’s contact page lists their phone and fax numbers, not to mention the email form below that.
Would be a shame if that information was to circulate far an wide, and ruin that despicable woman's easter holidays
I found the lawsuit filing. It is a work of art, brief and to the point. If you read nothing else, check out page 2, the section headed Nature of the Action. Magnificent.
One of the things that bugs me in the notes is a bunch of people being like 'it's a livestock animal, it's her fault for getting attached' and.
My dudes, I cannot emphasize enough that the little girl's emotional attachment to the goat is in fact the least of the issues with this story. The main issue in this story is the fact that a bunch of cops broke multiple laws, including the unlawful entry to the property the goat was being held, the unlawful seizure and destruction of said goat, and the unlawful use of a criminal search warrant in a civil dispute case, just to start with.
The little girl owned the goat. At no point in the proceedings - and indeed at no point in the proceedings in the course of the normal auction-purchase-slaughter of a livestock animal in this program - did the fair own the goat. At no point in the proceedings did the person who successfully bid on the goat actually own it - he had made the winning bid to purchase rights to the meat. He hadn't even done that yet! The goat legally and incontrovertibly belonged to the little girl. The very worst that should have happened in this story is a brief property ownership dispute in a civil court.
The fair CEO decided to unlawfully force the auction of the goat, and, when the girl's mother began to dispute her actions, to make a false claim of theft, with precisely ZERO legal basis, calling the cops on an already emotionally fragile child, and then had the temerity to be angry with the child's mother because the story was making them look bad on social media.
Regardless of your opinion on the meat industry, livestock slaughter, or 4H, 'cops drive 500 miles, perform an illegal search, seizure and destruction of an American citizen's property, on the word of a biased 3rd party with zero legal rights to the property in question' should make you angry. Because it is a violation of civil rights, and also had no motive besides needless cruelty to an already grieving child.
Humans Are Weird
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?” “Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.” “What, the molten rock?” “Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–” “You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?” “Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”
“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”
Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.
It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.
“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.
“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”
Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.
“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”
“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”
Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”
“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”
Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”
Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.
“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-” ‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’ “What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.” ‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’ “….you….you are going to die, you know this right?” ‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’
“Listen, lad. I’ve built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was molten magma. All those aliens said I was daft to build a castle on a molten planet, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the magma. So, I built a second one. That sank into the magma. So I built a third one. That spontaneously combusted, turned to ash, then sank into the magma. But the fourth one stayed up. An’ that’s what your gonna get, lad – the strongest castle in this solar system.”
“I’m gonna need for you to explain ‘hurricane parties’ to me again. You humans have the technology to track these apocalyptic storms of wind and rain and predict where on the landmass they’ll hit up to a week in advance. And you…have social gatherings during them?”
“Well yeah, but only up to about Category 3 strength. Then it’s time to pack the car and head inland for most people, although a few hardy souls stick around and ride them out.”
“Oh good. Category 3 is what again? Winds up to 75 kilometers per hour?”
“No no, Category 3 starts at 175 kilometers per hour. You left off the one.”
I’m sure I’ve reblogged some version of this before, but I needed the STRONGEST CASTLE IN THIS SOLAR SYSTEM on my blog.
“This planet is so cool!”
“It’s a planet completely made of ice.”
“Yeah! Let’s send some scientists! Or I could be the youngest person there!”
“You’d die, it’s below freezing level!”
“But the blizzards are so pretty!”
“The storms of dEATH ARE NOT PRETTY!”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
“No, of course not. Nobody ‘sent’ anyone, they just went up there on their own.”
“They WHAT?”
Oh my fuck nuggets, the actual thread
@hellsite-hall-of-fame
Unfortunately not an update announcement, just me ranting into the void. Please feel free to ignore.
****
What I've learned working as a cashier in retail is that in THIS economy, the world could burn (and has in some cases) and I will laugh.
(just a little and it only lasts as long as I remember that this is Real and there are Humans There.)
That is not to say that I don't have empathy for others suffering.
I'm not saying I want others to suffer.
What I am saying is that there is a marginalized portion of consumers that are so polite and kind, willing to make sure that those of us working retail right now know that they're glad our business is open and we were willing to work.
And then there's the other consumers. Who act like everything is as it always has been. Who act like us asking them to just wear a mask for their (at minimum in some cases) fifteen minute shopping trip is the ultimate sin against them. Who act like we should be able to snap our fingers and just. Have what they want.
And when we don't, it's suddenly a personal attack on them. It's about us apparently having something against them for whatever reason. It's us being terrible, terrible people for not having the ability or resources to bend over backwards.
It's these people that make me want to throw my hands up and walk away.
Were it not for the fact that I have the ability and desire to work, I would just walk away.
People suck.
(Not the Unicorn People, who are good and nice and polite and treat their cashier's and retail workers like people. Never you Unicorn People.)
So very true.
Throwback to all these Jesus comics I drew in 2012…
Good post OP
Good post, OP, and if you ever decide to do another may I please suggest “NOT IN HEBREW IT DOESN’T” as a punchline? So much of the Old Testament is HORRIFICALLY translated from the Tanakh, it drives me batty.
WAIT WAIT WHAT DOES IT SAY?????? I NEED TO LIKE,, DESTROY MI MUM FOR BEING REALLY HOMOPHOBIC
Okay, so, strictly speaking, the infamous Leviticus 18:22 does say “forbidden.” Here’s the thing:
1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.
2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.
3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.” Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”
Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.
Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”
4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.” 5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).
So you’ll note, there are a lot of ways to read this verse, and only a one-to-one translation with no cultural awareness produces “being gay is wrong, all of the time”. (You’ll also notice the word “abomination” is nowhere to be found. That’s like … a straight-up fiction created for who only knows what reason.)
Apparently tumblr mobile doesn’t want to show @prismatic-bell ’s long and in-depth essay, so here’s the screenshots, because it still shows up on mobile browsers:
Much appreciated.
I love when scholarship and history debunks bullshit
…I sadly have more bullshit to report.
“removed for violating guidelines”, EVERY screenshot.
…goddamnit
Let’s try this again
I am horrified that @prismatic-bell keeps getting censored + this info is gold.
Many thanks, @pulmonary-poultry. This isn’t the only Jewish post of mine that’s mysteriously stopped showing up in searches and/or vanished from my blog entirely, but it is the one I get the most requests to repost, so this saves me from having to rewrite the whole damned essay. @the-invisible-self, thanks for bringing it to my attention that someone was able to preserve the post!
what the FUCK??? WHICH community guidelines would an analysis of the Old Testament violate??
unless tumblr staff is just removing images that get reported a bunch of times
Never not gonna reblog
@prismatic-bell RESPECT 💜
I mean I’m not Christian, so I don’t completely understand everything going on here, but… proving the fact that all these ___phobes twist religious literature and religion into something they can use to manipulate people into doing and believing what they think is ‘right’ and exposing all their asses is worth the confusion. So… HECK YEAH REBLOGGGGG!!!!!
Genderswapped Robihachi
How to stop relying on hyperfocus
[source.. well, myself]
(Fun fact: the conversation happened with @spacejammie2020 on tumblr. The screenshot was taken with their permission.)
Yea, it takes practice.
You might fail once or twice or thrice.. Or hundredth time.
I’ve genuinely quit tumblr many times. I’ve stopped blogging for months many many times. Literally, you can check my archive to see how often I’ve stopped posting on tumblr.
But I always come back. And it always takes me less time.
Its like getting into habit of exercising.
Takes constant effort.
It’s not easy AT ALL. Changing is not EASY.
But it’s not impossible.
(How? Well here’s some example by a writer and musician)
Watch: The most wonderful moment of joy came when he entered a Nazi guard bungalow.
We are the last generation who can hear from these survivors directly. Do not take that lightly. Do not waste that opportunity. Do not forget your freedom isn’t infinitely guarenteed. And do not, do not, let it happen again.
Really truly, watch the video, reblog it. Teaching about the holocaust is so necessary for our generation before it slips under the rug and people forget about it.
(Seen on FB)
RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.
When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by.
I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.
“What are you struggling with?” he asked.
I gestured around me and said “I dunno man. Life.”
Not satisfied with my answer, he said “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”
I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it.
I wanted to have something more substantial.
Something more profound.
But I didn’t.
So I told him, “Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”
I felt like an idiot even saying it.
What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with *actual* problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes?
But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said:
“RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”
I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.
“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”
It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express.
That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times.
I felt like I had conquered a dragon.
The next day, I took a shower lying down.
A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the fuck they fit.
There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.
Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry.
But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:
THERE ARE NO RULES.
RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!
(by Kate Scott 2018)
what is Herdbalist Zuko's hair like?
YES. Finally, someone asking the IMPORTANT questions!
“Well I would have brought my comb. But you kidnapped me.”
“You are just not gonna let that go, are you,” Sokka said.
“Sokka,” Katara said. “Aang did pull him into the saddle. While he was saying ‘no.’ And then we didn’t ever bring him back.”
“Because there is an evil fire-shooty admiral guy after us! ‘Us’ including him! Which I am still waiting on an explanation for, but I will at least accept a ‘thank you Team Avatar for saving me!’ ”
“Well,” Spirit said.
“Do not–”
“I would have brought my gratitude–”
“–finish that.”
“But you kidnapped me.”
He didn’t even say it accusingly. He said it while scratching the sweet spot at the base of a lemur’s tail, smiling with airy indifference, as Katara sat behind him combing out the bison-flight tangles from his ridiculously luxuriant waves of hair.
“Did you leave your dignity behind, too?” Sokka accused. “What kind of man has hair down to his butt–”
“Longer than that,” Katara reports, running her comb through just a section of that hair because they would probably both have to be standing for her to get a full swipe in.
“–and lets another man’s little sister play hair stylist? Do you not know the danger of surrendering hair control to a little sister?”
“I can think of worse things a little sister could do.” Their demure firebender kidnappee continued to smile. Sokka would have really appreciated if he’d been a surly firebending prisoner instead.
“I’m going to give you hair loops,” Katara said. “Beads or no beads?”
“No beads!” Sokka snapped.
“Just do the opposite of whatever your brother says.”
“Beads!”
“I’m so glad you agree,” his little sister said, sickly-sweet, her smile matching the firebender’s smirk.
It was stupid how good his hair looked when Katara was done. All… loopy, and beady. And every day on the flight north it got more and more complicated because there wasn’t much to do on the back of a bison, until there were tiny braidy loops and swirls intertwining everywhere and a loopy-beady high bun, and still so much hair left to cascade down his back, and it didn’t even get sufficiently ruined when the Northern waterbenders attacked even though Sokka’s hair looked like a hare-possum had died in it.
And one of their warriors offered the guy a hand down from Appa when they got to the city. What was with that?
“She’s pretty,” said warrior sighed, as all that hair went swishing after Aang and Katara.
Sokka squawked.
“Sorry,” the guy said. “Your sister?”
Additional squawking ensued.
bulky winter coat that hides general figure? check demurely lowering gaze and responding only in the shyest of manly-voice-obscuring whispers? check and check Sokka’s increasing squawk frequency making him seem protective rather than about to die from surrealism-induced asphyxiation? overly checked and after all the taller sister doesn’t have a betrothal necklace
If you wanna land a woman like that her family ought to know you can provide for her. Just about every day some fellow or other is stopping by to drop off gifts. Fine, sharp bone needles, nice fatty blubber from the last harvest, enough meat to get into Sokka’s good graces. A basket of newly hatched puffinlemmings, they’ll be real tender simmered up in broth-
Sokka blinks and the bearer of delicious snacks is flailing and splashing in the canal. Spirit swishes inside with the meeping basket while Sokka is busy saving his fellow young water warrior from the icy grip of icy drowning.
“So, uh. Sorry about the hypothermia, man, I guess this is it, thanks for all the meat, it’s been real-“
“Wow. She’s gonna be SUCH a great mom.“
The squawkings will continue until morale improves.
Katara went past jealous-on-principle and straight to this-is-hilarious on like, day two. It helps that Spirit makes it clear early and often that they are sharing everything, and that hair clip would look much better on Katara, also see how you can take out the stabby part and use it for actual stabbing in a pinch? Boys never think to be wary of the hairpieces.
This is what having a big sister would be like, isn’t it?
Meanwhile Sokka started out nonverbal on all this because what is his life, and progressed to playing along because even more healer training for their healer is a good move.
Having now seen and overheard way too many comparisons between his sweet demure absolute lady of an older sister and his wild boyish younger sister, Sokka is now in the Carry His Club And Use It Liberally stage. Because these northerners wouldn’t know a lady if she water-whipped them and also what does either fighting or healing or doing chores when they need doing have to do with being a lady. Or a gent.
…His brain hurts so now he’s going to physically make other people’s brains hurt, is what he’s saying. And DON’T TALK ABOUT HIS SISTERS. Either of them.
I wrote a thing bc i have no self control.
She’s too pale, with too bright eyes, which speak of the realities of what’s been happening in the South, and other things Tarkik really doesn’t want to think about, just like her scar. But. But she’s so very, very pretty. She practically glides down when he helps her off the Avatar’s sky bison, floats over the ice. Its almost like she’s dancing, sometimes. He’s never seen her slip, never seen her anything other than graceful, even in the face of her little sisters ridiculous show of power against the North’s most powerful Waterbending Master.
(That’s not necessarily true. She had clutched at Katara’s arm and tried to convince her to stop, he’d overheard as they’d past him while he stood on guard at the doors, panic clear on her face, marring it more than the scar ever seemed to.)
She’s graceful even when she dumps him into polar waters to save puffinlemmings from the literal stew pot. Its so sweet, he thinks, that she’s so concerned about such soft, little creatures.
Of course, he would never presume upon her. Her younger siblings, and to a lesser extent, the Avatar, are willing to step in and defend her honor. And they’re all equally terrifying in their very own ways. Ways he grows to accept when he see’s Spirit (and what a strange name, but oddly fitting) catching the Avatar by the edge of his robes to ground him, or bullies Sokka into sitting down with them all and taking a breather, or wraps her hand around Katara’s arm to keep her from launching herself at the other benders who talk shit about her loud enough for her to overhear.
If Tarkik sighs dreamily and leans against his spear a little when he see’s Spirit walking along the canals with Princess Yue, well. His fellow guards stopped teasing him about it days ago. After all, its hard to not appreciate just how graceful she is next to the Moon Graced Princess herself.
He’s also noticed both the Princess and Spirit have beads and ice in their hair, now. From Spirit’s little sister, and her hair sparkles like the stars at night, and oh. Well. Quimmiq’s hand holds fast to the back of his parka, keeping him from falling off the edge of the wall. And Spirit and the Princess turn the corner and he can only grin sheepishly at the man who really looks like he was considering thumping him with the end of his spear. As if that would keep him focused on guard detail with a paragon of Northern Water Tribe femininity right in front of his eyes.
(Learning that Spirit is in fact, Zuko, a believed-dead Fire Nation (ex?) Prince boggles his mind but y’know what. Tarkik still thinks Spirit’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen.)
[id: A series of color images set on the Gaang’s arrival to the North Pole.
First: The focus is on Spirit-Zuko’s hand, clasped in someone else’s as they’re helped down from Appa. Spirit’s face is demurely turned away, their hair in a traditional Water Tribe woman’s style a la Kya. There are anime sparkles and soft lighting all around them.
Second: Spirit turns to face the one helping them down. Their face is largely obscured, as in a dazzling yet fleeting memory. More sparkles.
Third: Sokka stands slack-jawed as three young northern Tribesmen watch Spirit go. Dialogue from the men:
Wow
She’s as beautiful as the star hung sky
She’s so far out of your league bro
End id.]
The Evening Star, Washington DC, October 16, 1918
This aged well
been thinking about appearances and stuff
#anastasia (1997) actually fucking me up since i was 4 years old
bonus:
This Dimitri is straight out of a Russian novel
his character really is more of a prince by sheer default then nearly any actual disney prince out there and you may all fight me on this - he excudes that decent slavic sadness™ centrified all the way
reblog to save a life
now this is why they should bring back home ec. we dumbasses dive into college and the so-called ‘real world’ with no knowledge of this stuff, only knowing how to find the square root of x divided by a donkey’s left testicle
