EMILY'S OLD TUMBLR

everything's coming up milhouse

[rohie-deactivated20191102]

“Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

— I Know What You Think of Me, Tim Kreider for the New York Times

[owlmylove]

after YEARS of seeing this quote online and finding it to be the most deeply and resoundingly profound writing i finally found the source article and absolutely nothing could prepare me for this opening paragraph

[bi-icon]

Okay but the whole article is really interesting and also contains this quote which I’ve never heard before but really like:

“Anyone worth knowing is inevitably also going to be exasperating”

[godless-of-the-hunt]

this would fix me

[emilysoldtumbla]

this would fix all of us

[theprison1974]

we need to restructure society in such a way that prohibits emerald fennell from making films

[turquoisemagpie]

Petition: Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services

Introduce a law to legally protect the right of those aged 18 and over to transition using NHS services. This should specifically cover phys

Uk peeps!! Let’s get this going! 🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇧

[18thcenturythirsttrap]

...Non-UK peeps, please reblog for reach ❤️

[quasi-normalcy]

The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.

[quasi-normalcy]

I’d just like to point out that every single thing that has happened in the 6 years since I created this post has only reinscribed its absolute moral correctness in my mind.

[were--ralph]

MANIFEST

MANIFEST

[marxism-transgenderism]

Had to unfollow this one person on here cause they just would not stop making posts about how transfems on e getting periods is just made up symptoms and like, I don't have definitive proof I only have my and others experience but like how do you, as someone who is not on e, who has access to the same amount of studies looking into this with decent sample sizes as I do (none), feel so confident to say it's all just placebo and made up ? What makes you so confident ? Cause I gotta say after almost two years of nearly right on the dot once a month suddenly feeling nausea all week, taking the most unbelievable shits, feeling all my organs cramp, and having mood swings out the ass which always just so happens to line up with when the two people with uteruses in my house also get their periods, I feel like I have more data to work off of than you do

[marxism-transgenderism]

LOSING IT

[emilysoldtumbla]

S A M E

[madisoncounty]

Every Marisa Coulter Outfit in His Dark Materials (2019 - 2022)

[emilysoldtumbla]

Perfection

[doberbutts]

“trans men don’t experience misogyny because they’re men thus cannot experience women’s oppression”

I hate to tell you this but even cis men experience misogyny if they step a toe over the line of what our incredibly sexist society sees as “proper” for a man. You really don’t think that a man with interests or expression the world sees as “female” aren’t treated with violence?

[doberbutts]

“would you say that of other privileged groups? do you think white people experience racism?”

I mean sometimes they do yeah. I know a white guy with monolid eyes and zero known Asian ancestors and he absolutely experiences anti-Asian racism on a fairly regular basis because people think he’s mixed Asian/white. I know a woman who was told throughout her life that she was Native as an adoptee with no known history or background who experienced incredibly violent amounts of anti-Native racism until she discovered as an adult through DNA test that she is 100% white. I know white people who tan incredibly dark in the summer comparatively that are constantly accused of being mixed race and experiencing racism due to that, usually anti-Mexican racism perpetrated against white people with Greek or Italian ancestors.

Their ability to make it stop by saying “hey, I’m white actually” only goes as far as the person enacting violence on them is willing to believe them. They still have to live with the trauma and physical scars from the altercations. We live in a racist world and thus there will be violent people who force all others to pass a whiteness test and eliminating or harming the rest.

[doberbutts]

Got an ask that I just block/deleted but it was basically “so you think cis people experience transphobia!?!?!?!?” and uh

If you think cis butches don’t experience both transphobia and misogyny and homophobia for daring to be women who break gender roles while still holding onto their womanhood you’ve sorely misunderstood just how bad butches have it in this world sorry. If you don’t think cis queens experience transphobia and homophobia and misogyny for daring to be men who break gender roles while being loud and proud about it and still holding onto their manhood then you’ve sorely mistaken just how bad they have it in this world as well.

Not to mention all of the cis men who wear dresses and skirts and makeup and nail polish and heels simply because they like them who experience all of these things. All of the cis straight women who simply just exist but something about them doesn’t pass society’s “woman enough” test, leading to them being caught in bathroom bills and sporting rules and being attacked by people who mistake them for being transgender or gay.

Just like how straight people experience homophobia to such a degree that they literally beat their children out of any potential deviance from rigidly upheld gender roles and let politicians make jokes on national TV about how they’d drown their pre-teen kids if they came out as LGBT. Do you really think a straight kid still figuring themselves out hears that and doesn’t internalize that homophobia? Doesn’t rigidly hold themselves to some impossible standard so that no one could ever possibly think they’re gay? You don’t think straight teenage boys who maybe don’t pass some bully’s straightness test are getting the shit kicked out of them for “being gay” when, surprise, they aren’t? You don’t think all those kids being attacked by their priests and coaches and teachers are being told “this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t gay” when they’re literally not gay? Do you know how many straight kids had close calls at my school that famously expels all gay kids, because someone made up a believable enough rumor? Do you know how many of them still got their shit kicked in even though administration ultimately decided to let them stay?

All bigotry is violent and all bigotry catches people it doesn’t “intend” to and hurts them as well. It doesn’t matter what someone’s label is, or if they even have one. It matters if the person enacting the violence is doing it because their victim didn’t pass whatever “acceptable enough” test they didn’t know they were being subjected to.

Everyone is at risk. Oppression doesn’t care what your label is. Some people are more visible targets than others, and as a result those people are the more common targets. That doesn’t mean no one else experiences it.

[doberbutts]

My first post to reach 2k without people clowning in the notes I feel so proud

[emilysoldtumbla]

the best post ever

[lohboh]

[lohboh]

Posts that Tumblr will blaze:

• Blatant NSFW that breaks community guidelines

• Christian proselytizing

• Vent posts

Posts that Tumblr won't blaze:

• Spoilers for a shitty game that lines a transphobe's pockets

[transarsonist]

🔥All Organic Blaze It Is Then🔥

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

[daughter-of-sapph0]

it's really disappointing how people's critique of jkr starts and ends with her transphobia, and they completely ignore her blatant antisemitism, racism, homophobia, slavery apologism, sympathy for the wizard nazis, (the wizard nazi incel) snape's redemption, the villain of fantastic beasts trying to stop the holocaust, and the new game literally being a rehash of the blood libel myth.

[fullyfunctionalminiaturebeehive]

&her ableism, fatphobia, classism, and general naked imperialism (look at things like the "thunderbird" in fantastic beasts, or anything and everything she's ever said or done about Scotland, for example)

This ass-hat has actually lobbied against things like "letting disabled people survive" and "the colonised nation I live in taking steps toward independence."

Oh, and you already mentioned it, but - antisemitism, again. Cannot stress the antisemitism enough because, holy fuck she's so antisemitic!

[ecl1psical]

as a trans person this is is so important to look at and spread bc us trans people are not the only people affected, and we need to band together to spread awareness about the full extent of JKRs bigotry.

[headspace-hotel]

Yeah...it's really confusing how people focus exclusively on her being transphobic when she very much did recently write a book that openly and obviously makes fun of criticisms of ableism, where a person with fibromyalgia and several others of the most hard-to-diagnose painful chronic conditions (somewhat implied to be faking) murders a poor innocent writer who is being accused of ableism. 🤨

[lordkingsmith-deactivated202311]

When I was 14 I had a make a wish and a very low chance of living out the year. I asked to meet her and her response was “I don’t meet *those* children” and I hear now she has a do not contact policy from make a wish. I’m glad she’s being cancelled, at this point it’s whatever it takes for me. Hopefully all of her nastiness is revealed and she can answer for all of it.

But ye reblogging for the nice list of reasons for not giving her money.

[the-girl-with-the-mousey-hair-d]

So, in The Golden Compass, particularly when kids are threatened with intercision or when they’re escaping the adults at Bolvangar, how is it not more of an advantage that children’s daemons can shapeshift and adults’ daemon’s can’t? Because I’m thinking if a few kids had their daemons change into, say, 600 pound Siberian tigers and 700 pound grizzly bears and animals like that, couldn’t they easily overpower the daemons of the adults and therefore the adults themselves? One of the Bolvangar doctors has a baboon daemon, I think another had something in the rabbit or hare family but can’t find the reference now, and some of the nurses who underwent intercision have these creepy zombified little dog daemons - but none of those would be a match for the 600 pound Siberian tiger or whatever. Wouldn’t it be such a tactical advantage to have your daemon take a huge and deadly form like that, grab an adult’s by the neck, shake it about, and be ready to kill with a bite right to the throat like a lot of real carnivores (including the cat family) often do? Or come to think of, claws scaled to that tiger going right for the face and the eyes would be a hell of a threat, too.

Even if your average decent child couldn’t muster the sang froid to kill, even when threatened with torture or death - like the plot point in Harry Potter about Unforgivable Curses being really hard for decent people to use - it seems to me you could do a lot of overpowering of your opponent just with the threat. That’s what I’d do. Cool as the daemons are, it’s probably overall safer to have your soul/personality/life force integrated into you and not physical and external where it could be harmed, but having your daemon able to shape shift and help you would be awesome. If I were a child in Lyra’s world and in mortal danger, I’d have my daemon try the Siberian tiger tactic.

Thoughts?

[vanillafrappes15]

To be honest, I think the daemon’s abilities to shape shift are limited to the strength of the child. I am leaning towards mental strength, but maybe it’s physical. It’s been such a long time since I’ve last read that trilogy though.

If the daemons can shapeshift to whatever, though, then I agree. It certainly would have been more of an advantage, but then there’s a large chance it would have been a less tough adventure. Not only that, but that may be too graphic for a kid’s book. (Well, somewhat kid/YA series.)

[dalraptor]

This. Remember all those times Coulter’s daemon easily overpowered so many kids’ daemons? She’s an adult. Adults are physically and usually mentally “more developed” or “stronger” than kids, so it makes sense that the kids daemons even if they turned into something that should be very strong (e.g. tiger) actually wouldn’t be able to do too much.

Another thing is that in the bookverse, you’d settle about 14-16 years old. This means that the adults in Bolvangar had their form for at least ten years - that’s a HUGE amount of time for your daemon to be completely comfortable in their form, they know that form inside and out. The kids’ daemons know their forms for maybe a couple months at the most so they’re more clumsy with those forms.

[ihaveanieceandadeadbrothernow]

also, it may not be said in canon but being kids as they are, woudn’t the daemons also turn into the kid version of any animal they try? so as much of a tiger, elephant, bear or wolf your daemon could become they would still be the cub version of them, that addind what @marchingdevil said means that kids are still weaker than adults and the only advantage they really have is to be quiker and easy to hide (and to fly)

[a-daemon-called-hamish]

The age of daemon’s appearance seems to vary throughout the books. In La Belle Sauvage all of baby Lyra’s daemon forms are also baby like when pan turns into a tiger cub and there are points in HDM where Pullman specifies Pan has turned into a puppy but we are also shown children with bird daemon’s being fully formed and flying which a chick or fledging wouldn’t be so competent at.

I also think what they can turn into at any given moment is due to mental strength but also emotions. There’s a point where (I think it’s Pan?) says he can’t tell you why he turned into a mole only that he just felt mole like. The children in these moments are probably terrified and panicking and not likely to be thinking things through logically. Most people have a fight, flight or freeze instinct to fear and that probably affects the form. The might have a fight form like a bear or tiger but perhaps they’ve frozen like a rabbit in the headlights or they’ve turned to a mouse desperately trying to scurry away.

I think one other thing is it’s still tabboo even when fighting to touch another person’s deamon. Yes the scientist does it to lyra and she’s completely stunned but it’s shown that’s unusual in the book and sort of the equivalent of sexual assault. If the children’s daemon’s did attack they’d probably automatically go for the scientists’ daemons and like it’s said above some adults seem to be able to overpower children’s daemons despite weaker forms. But I also wonder whether maybe having a severed daemon is actually advantageous to the staff. If you’re not connected to your daemon your not going to feel much when it’s attacked and there’s nothing to stop you from subduing the child.

[torrefaction-of-sliver]

Children don’t normally struggle during the intercision process. The scientists who attack Lyra and Pan are completely unprepared for the fight they put up, because that has never happened before. Until the introduction of the guillotine, intercision was performed under anesthesia using the “Maystadt process” (ch 16). Lyra is sedated when she first arrives at Bolvangar (“Lyra struggled to sit up. She didn’t remember taking a sleeping pill, but there might well have been something in the drink she’d had. Her head felt full of eiderdown, and there was a faint pain throbbing behind her eyes” ch 15), and it’s possible that children are under conscious sedation during the guillotine operation as well. What’s more, the staff at Bolvangar lie to the children in order to keep them calm. As soon as she arrives there, an orderly assures her that she wasn’t really kidnapped at all, but got lost and was brought to the outpost for her own safety. At one point while being “tested for Dust” Lyra reflects that if the operation were performed now she wouldn’t even have a chance to resist. The girl who was with Tony Makarios before his operation reports the nurse telling him, “It’s something to make you more grown up. She said everyone had to have it, that’s why grownups’ dæmons don’t change like ours do. So they have a cut to make them one shape forever, and that’s how you get grown up.” (ch 16) Lyra has the benefit of her experiences eavesdropping on Lord Asriel’s talk about Dust, of participating in the gyptian rescue mission, and of her firsthand experience living with Mrs. Coulter, so she has reason to suspect the Bolvangar staff, but everything there takes place in the utmost secrecy, and no other child’s parents were directly involved in the research being done there. The other kidnapped children have suspicions, nothing more. The children and their dæmons don’t fight when they’re being intercised because by the time they realize they’re in danger, it’s too late.

[hatters-workshop]

It is established in the books that daemon sizes have an upper limit. Stelmaria is mentioned as being one of the biggest daemons, and Pan takes on his biggest size form when they are defending the cat from the kids on Cittagazze.

I think there’s also an aspect of what is mentioned above: the kids are brainwashed into thinking they’re having something normal happen, and that it’s good actually and not to worry, plus most kids, even little monsters like Lyra, aren’t truly truly violent with malicious intent. These adults know what they’re doing and are willing to commit violence against these kids to do it. A brainwashed scared confused possibly drugged child and their daemon are not necessarily going to think to transform into a tactically advantageous form in the split second they realise something bad is happening, meanwhile the adults and their daemons are aware and probably trained for it going sideways.

Also it’s one thing to say “if I were in this situation I would do this super cool thing” when you’re sitting at home watching or reading it and have the time to think (we all do it!) but actually in the moment of something unexpected, fast paced and horribly traumatising happening, it can be amazing how much less competent most people are, let alone a child.

Also part of it is imagination/knowledge. Would your average ten year old from a poor or servant family (which Mrs Coulter seems to target primarily) who has likely never read a book, been to a zoo or museum, and doesn’t have access to TV like in our world, know that many animals to get their daemon to turn into? While I know it’s an imperfect comparative but how many tactically advantageous animals would a victorian london urchin know off the top of their head? While yes they may have seen other people’s daemons, but they’re likely to be in a bit of an echo chamber for the most part of the people around them having a similar pool of daemon forms e.g. the servants all having dogs, gyptians often having birds or cats etc.

[emilysoldtumbla]

They’re not established as having an upper limit; I bet there are elephant and giraffe dæmons - but as we learn from the book of dust it seems they are kind of metaphysical in nature, like a collective imagination. When Asriel steps into Malcolm’s boat, Stelmaria is described as ‘light as a shadow’. So those fights seem to be based purely on mental agility and weight - and probably experience. But these are all interesting points!

[antiqueanimals]

Valentin Fedotov (1928-1995)

[tortiefrancis]

(ID: art of a red fox running through a wooded area, some trees in the foreground, without leaves. the piece has no lineart and the colours are soft, in brown and orange hues. /End ID)

[greenishness]

i'm thinking about charlotte brontë spending her last years editing and publishing her sisters' writings and about christopher tolkien dedicating his life to the protection and meticulous reconstruction his father's life's work and about johanna van gogh publishing the letters between vincent and theo that would propel vincent van gogh into fame because she knew how much her husband had loved his brother, and about how so often art isn't just a reflection of the artist's mind and skills but a testament to the fact that they were loved

[emilysoldtumbla]

Emily and Anne Brontë were published by their own merit on their own terms thanks (though their publisher was a dick). Charlotte’s proposal at this time was rejected. She then published with someone else who worked quicker and got her work out quicker.

But it’s not bc of her diligence they were published, and she also destroyed SO much following their deaths (including a possible second novel by Emily) so we could actually have a darn sight more.

Yes, be grateful for what we have. But it wasn’t down to Charlotte’s love.

[blackpyrefly]

there are so many guys in pokemon that look less than a year away from realizing theyre women

[lovinglystar]

[toadwiz]

[pokemonheritageposts]

Pokemon Heritage Post

[emilysoldtumbla]

And then there’s Lorelei who is happily living her best trans life

[90scartoons]

[emilysoldtumbla]

The Holy Trinity of Queer Threats to 90s Kids

(The enby imp; the terrifying malevolent trans queen / femme (with crab claws ofc); and the menacing yet goofy trans guy / butch (with non-functioning antennae) (ofc)

[all-pacas]

i have a lot of feelings and thoughts about coelacanths today

[all-pacas]

like… they’re blue

you have this mysterious fish that  no one really cared about, because everyone assumed they’d gone extinct with the dinosaurs. an interesting footnote, but one of many, many fossil species. 

and later the coelacanth gets some fame as a so-called “missing link” species, a theory which is now outdated (and not accurate for coelacanths) but was really influential at the time. because they have some weird biological quirks – bones in fins! – people were like “oh, they must be a missing link.” so the coelacanth was launched into some fame with the theory of evolution. it got brought up a lot. drawn in old textbooks as proof.

and then a fisherman finds a weird fish off the coast of south africa and calls a local fish expert who had let it be known she was interested in weird finds, and he brings her the (unfortunately badly rotted) corpse and she’s like “well, this is sure weird,” and sends off the bones to other experts, who start to quietly freak out, and rush to south africa, and rewards are offered for another one, any other one, and a few years later one is caught and frozen before rotting.

and it’s this incredible discovery, this extinct creature come to life (the prehistoric coelacanth lived in swamps and marshes in south america; these now are deep ocean fish in and around the indian ocean, but it’s still recognizably the same species)!

but it’s also blue.

not like, muddy blue, or tumblr-default-background blue.

proper shimmering sapphire blue and white. almost turquoise in some lights. this like… muddy, fossil creature. always drawn in dinosaur browns and grays. and it’s alive and it’s blue. just imagine being the scientist who opened that crate to this creature for the first time. you’re already excited, you’ve known about this fish for decades, you thought it was a story, you know it’s in this box. you expect  to see the weird fins and the strange tail. you know it’s large and odd looking. and you open it up and it’s this beautiful, shining blue, you know?

[all-pacas]

[img described: a coelacanth. it is blue.]

[emilysoldtumbla]

Like when they first filmed giant squid

And they were like

Gold