636.5. Seems clear enough to me. Jugglinggoth on AO3. She/her pronouns. I was born in 1983, I'm gay, and I swear a lot, and I don't think any of those things put me on a par with porn blogs so just... use your common sense, yeah?
TFW you listen to a three-part podcast (‘Behind the Bastards') about the Belgian Congo and one of your special interests is horrifying zoonotic diseases and that's why you can't ever be happy.
Yes we all know (I hope) that King Leopold II of Belgium was a straight-up monster who stole land and people to create a country so he could enslave it for his own enrichment, and killed millions of people in the process. And while Leopold finally died to much rejoicing in 1909, colonial rule would last until 1960.
I did not know that the newly-independent First Congolese Republic had a perfectly good leader in Patrice Lumumba. Who was then just straight-up assassinated by a combination of the Belgian government and the CIA in 1961. And that following a few years of civil war, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was installed in a CIA-backed coup in 1965. He would then rule for over 30 years.
The narrative we get is that as soon as Belgium moved out, the country immediately fell to civil war and dictatorship. Implication: colonialism wasn't that bad actually. Implication: see the savages really can't rule themselves.
No. Bullshit. Belgium and the CIA did that. Belgium because they were actively funding and encouraging at least two factions in the multi-way civil war. They'd promised not to re-conquer the Congo. They hadn't promised not to re-conquer anyone who split off from it. The CIA because once the UN failed to restrain Belgium, Lumumba turned to the Soviets in desperation. And there was a slight Cold War happening at the time.
So far so bad but I can make it worse. The other big thing that was happening in the Congo around that time was the start of the global outbreak of HIV-1-M. Twelve different strains of HIV have jumped to humans from other primates on twelve different occasions (that we know of). HIV-1-M jumped from Congolese chimpanzees to humans around 1920ish, but really started exploding and going international in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The earliest HIV samples we have are from then-Leopoldville at this time. HIV-1-M is the strain responsible for about 90% of the ongoing AIDS pandemic and deaths.
Now maybe all the political stuff is completely irrelevant. It's not like ANYONE dealt well with the emergence of HIV. But I have a hunch that it's harder to notice and contain a new disease when the people dying from it are people you see as disposable (see also: Ronald Reagan, gays and homeless, 1980s), or when Belgium and the CIA just set the country on fire. And the movement of people in and around Leopoldville was definitely a factor in the spread; people tend to move more when a) you're using them as slave labour in your country-sized rubber plantation and b) you started a civil war.
(And THAT'S how you get to "The CIA did AIDS to keep the Africans down" but in a way that is actually accurate to history and virology.
So much shit that ACTUALLY HAPPENED in the Cold War kind of explains why conspiracy theorists are Like That. But also HIV came from SIV and causes AIDS, take your antiretroviral medicine if you can please. And everyone should have free healthcare to make that possible.)
Current collection of lanyard badges. Not pictured: "I doubt. I fear. I think strange things" (Dracula) and "Emotionally attached to fictional characters". Social Battery is on a slider and never gets above yellow.
I think the 'smart advertising' is literally advertising me chicken meat because my name has "chickens" in it and they're rescued chickens that turned me vegan can every third post not be skinned dismembered versions of my pets please
Why is it, when you are hauling a heavy and awkward thing around a limited space, someone always decides it would be really helpful if the space were further limited by their fragile body?
My whole philosophy for moving heavy awkward things is I'll just drop/launch/swing it if I have to. That requires I have free space not occupied by your very breakable body parts.
I can probably lift this bike above my head. I cannot lift this bike above my head without hitting you with it when you are standing there and distracting me.
Ah fuck. EHRC trans guidance dropped and it looks bad.
Anyone who thinks all-cis-women spaces are magically full of safety and solidarity where everyone's kind to each other and farts flower petals never went to an all-girls school. I did. Bitches're nasty.
Is there a sadder fucking sight than seeing alleged feminist, alleged gay activists crowing "it's the law"?
The law was never for us. I went to school under Section 28 and went to work when you could still sack people for being gay. If we needed to, to live our lives, we just broke it. We got it changed. That was normal. That's our history.
And like, I'm only 42! I'm a cisgender lesbian! I had it easy! Only got physically attacked twice, only got chucked out of somewhere once. I wasn't there for the GLF, barely there for Act Up and the Lesbian Avengers.
Embarrassing is what it is. Be gay, do crimes. Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you. Solidarity with all my trans siblings.
Ah fuck. EHRC trans guidance dropped and it looks bad.
Anyone who thinks all-cis-women spaces are magically full of safety and solidarity where everyone's kind to each other and farts flower petals never went to an all-girls school. I did. Bitches're nasty.
hokay so i was curious as a point of contrast to the Guardian list how well tumblr would do on a best 100 SFF novels list. so i went looking for one and google directed me to NPR's top 100 novels list and i'm like aight i'll just use that one keep it simple. but as i scrolled down the list i was like wait there's been no Octavia Butler at all?? which i honestly found quite offensive but i was deep into adding books to my list challenge by that point.
also the version of the list i was looking at only had 97 entries on it; i am unsure if that's a counting error bcos some of the entries are series or if it's just missing 3 items off the NPR list but i opted to rectify both issues by adding 3 Octavia Butler books on the end.
so here is my list challenge of the 97 book long NPR top 100 list but I added Octavia Butler:
NPR top 100 books except there were only 97 on the list so I added 3 Octavia Butler's on the end. why in the world the original list had...
How many of the NPR: Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books list have you read?
0-10
11-20
21-30
31-40
41-50
51-60
61-70
71-80
81-90
91-100
Voting ended onMay 23
where a series is listed you can count that as the first book or the whole series at your discretion.
So, that Boys finale, eh? I am satisfied. I'm glad I watched it. I'd watch it again.
This sounds like damned with faint praise, but realistically, after five years of "I can make him worse", with a TV and a comics fan base to satisfy, and having swerved away from the comics ending early on, sticking the landing was always going to be difficult. Sticking the landing is always difficult. I am resigned to finales that don't satisfy, or seem designed to spite rather than reward the fans, or make earlier favourite episodes and characters unwatchable. This was not that.
(Incidentally I feel about the same about Good Omens.)
Specific spoilers for both show and comics below:
The ending of the comics was impossible as soon as they made Black Noir a) not a clone of Homelander and b) dead. That said, they still managed to hit the same thematic beats in a way that works: the irredeemably evil, too-powerful supe gets killed (specifically, gets his brains crowbarred out) and then Butcher becomes the final boss, taken out in a one-on-one confrontation with Hughie (acting in his capacity as the heart/normal guy/audience surrogate).
I liked that MM, the kindest and most sensible of the Boys, survived this ending. And the Female (though it's sort of implied that she and Frenchie might've survived Butcher's bomb in the comics). Butcher's murder spree through his former allies worked, thematically, in the comics - they'd all taken Compound V, they'd killed off a lot more superheroes, and it really did read as Butcher finishing the job he'd set himself. But I am soft-hearted in my middle age and don't want to cry about everyone, please.
The two I kinda wanted a limited redemption arc for both got it - Sage and Ashley. Look, I do not think I am the smartest person in the world. I do not understand what it's like specifically to be an uber-competent *Black* woman. But I know what it's like to be the only competent person on the group project, and I know what it's like to be mansplained to, and I know what it's like to just want to be left alone to read your books. And look, I have a type, and that type is 'very competent, very dangerous woman who just wants to be left alone'. Sage's tragedy was that she didn't live in a world where she could be an extremely competent Black woman. She was doomed to cleaning up other people's messes and not getting the credit. Helping the protagonists (is Frenchie the only man in the series who recognises her intellect and begs for her help?), willingly depowering herself and fucking off to a theme park was probably her best ending. And I liked the fact that as soon as she became stupid, her biggest priority was Harry Potter. Sorry not sorry.
She's also a good reminder not to let your sense of being the only competent one on the group project turn you homicidally angry, so there's that.
Ashley... "proud of you, bitch" about sums it up. She did so much stuff that was just awful on a mundane human level, for so long. She was Homelander as That Lady In HR. She did not deserve to keep power. But she was so clearly a person who was in over her own head and lashing out in terror, I'm glad she got to make one good choice before the grown-ups took her out for her own good.
And I'm glad that in both cases, redemption did not equal death.
Leaving Stan Edgar in charge of Vought with more government oversight was clearly a sequel hook for the next series of Gen V. When the Boys retire/die/disappear from watching the watchmen, the Guardians of Godolkin take over. Which would have made up for not seeing so much of them in the finale. But then Gen V got cancelled, so we'll just have to imagine it.
So TW for a bunch of thoughts about weight, and eating disorders, and aging, and femininity.
These days I only get the "have you lost weight?" question from women a generation or more older than me, which on the one hand is awesome. We seem to be finally normalising NOT asking people (women) about their weight.
On the other hand it's also awful for a bunch of reasons:
I don't wanna tell my elderly mum's elderly friends to fuck off. It's rude. I'm socially-awkward enough.
They don't get what I'm saying when I give a very no-fucks-given "I don't know". People of my age and/or neurotype get the silent "and I don't care". Older women, more into being feminine? Think I need convincing that I have and that they'd like to see more of it.
I do care. I'm faking it till I make it. I have been faking it till I make it since I stopped actively-disordered eating and moved into a house without a scale, oh, twenty years ago. I argue my doctors out of weighing me every single time - I'm not a dog with fleas, we're not dosing poison by kilo bodyweight. Not knowing or trying to change my weight in all that time takes active willpower and it's difficult to recover from an illness your society thinks is normal and good.
Hopefully not, because I'm trying to increase muscle and bone density. (I might make that my default answer.) I might have lost abdominal size. But I love running/hiking long distances (I finally get a break from dealing with people) and swimming in cold water (wipes my brain like an Etch-a-Sketch) and playing my violent sport (makes me feel strong) and lifting weights (makes me feel strong) and bouldering (makes me feel strong). And that's probably going to change my body composition somewhat when I'm hitting all my training goals. And I don't want to hear about how my body is less offensive to you when I take up less space. I don't think I'll ever be compact but if it happens it happens. It's not the goal. The goal is to be able to hit a bigger skater and not just bounce off, and carry my own furniture, and graduate from 50-km to 50-mile ultras.
I'm getting comments about my body from women who - and I'm not blaming them individually for this - would be in better shape now if they hadn't dieted. For whom the best time to start lifting weights was forty years ago, but the second best time is today. We don't measure your likelihood of death in old age in henchness. We measure it in frailty. And women (and other people raised as women and with oestrogen-predominant hormones) are fucking set up for frailty. We're told not to eat or get strong our whole lives, and then the oestrogen rug is pulled out from under us and we break our hips and die. (Don't even get me started on pregnancy. Where do you think that baby's skeleton comes from? It steals yours!)
I am watching Apex which should be subtitled 'Why We Choose The Bear' and should be shown in a double bill with Mad Max Fury Road called 'Charlize Theron Hates This Holiday In Australia'.
titsay
areudirty
janainaart
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
gummygunk
annaxmalina
kianamaiart
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
