Today is Tag der Deutschen Einheit (”Day of German Unity”) - Germany’s national public holiday, celebrated annually on October 3. It commemorates the anniversary of the German Reunification of East and West that happened in 1990, when the goal of a united Germany that originated in the 1800′s was fulfilled again. For this reason, the name addresses neither the re-union nor the union, but the unity of Germany.
An alternative choice to commemorate the Reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down: 9 Nov 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic (1918) and the defeat of Hitler’s first coup (1923). However, 9 Nov was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi pogroms against Jews in 1938 (Kristallnacht), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday. Therefore, 3 Oct 1990, the day of the formal Reunification, was chosen instead and replaced the previous “Day of German Unity” (17 June), which had been the national holiday of West Germany since 1954. This year’s celebration centers around Dresden, state capital of Sachsen under the motto: „Brücken bauen“ - “Building bridges”. Next year it will be in Mainz.
appalachia is devastated. towns i loved, towns i visited all the time, are gone. not damaged, GONE. they are leveled to the ground. there is nothing left but rubble and ruin. people are dead. appalachia is poor to begin with and relies on tourism for a lot of its income, and multiple of those tourist locations are just...gone.
my town is okay, but it's flooded and wrecked. trees are blocking all but one way out of our neighborhood. power lines are hanging limp in the roads. we've been without power for over 24 hours and will continue to be without power for likely another 24+. disabled people and poor people are GOING to die from this. gods save appalachia.
it's always a hit or miss with appalachian charities. a lot are just evangelism with no action behind what they do. i suggest looking into them before donating.
adding some additional photos from the other side of the mountains here in northeast tennessee. there has been genuinely catastrophic flooding in many areas and billions of dollars of damage across NETN and WNC. we are not built to withstand this. 33 people are currently missing in unicoi county alone
to those of you reblogging this, thank you. i have not seen one negative comment about appalachia and i cannot put into words what that means as someone who has lived here for their entire life. we are used to being mocked, scorned, and dismissed, to being the butt of classist jokes, and y'all aren't doing that. thank you. so much.
I will genuinely never forgive anyone involved in making The Imitation Game for their absolute travesty of Alan Turing’s story.
He was intensely autistic, and gay, and *kind*.
He mentored people below him in the programme - including women, who pretty much everyone else was crappy to.
He had terrible allergies and went cycling in a gas mask in the country to avoid then, and when he got overstimulated at parties he pulled incredibly daft elaborate “walking into a cupboard” leaving gags to handle them that left everyone screaming on the floor despite the silliness.
He got on really well with kids and never talked down to them. He gave his neighbours his sugar rations on their kids’ birthdays so she could always make them birthday cakes - even when he was being persecuted after the war, even when he was suffering horrible side effects from the tortures they put him through.
He was such an utterly, genuinely lovely human being, and he deserved so much damn better, and at the very *least* he deserved to be portrayed as who he was in the 21st fucking century instead of falling into a whole slew of horrifically harmful stereotypes that erased the fucking gift he was to us all over again.
my instagram explore page loves showing me those like erotic dark romance novel tiktoks and i really have to wonder: why do all these straight women desperately want to fuck a mafia boss
Sexual fantasies are, by their very nature, transgressive. Yes, even the fluffy, romantic ones. As long as general culture remains negative about sex and sexuality in any form that isn't cishet procreative sex within the confines of matrimony with the woman not as an equal actor but an object sex is performed onto, this is going to remain true.
And the thing about fantasies is that our brains like to take the things we crave the most and mix them up with our fears, anxieties, pain, and trauma into a melange of, sometimes, truly epic levels of fuckery.
But here's the secret - things we fantasize about, from the most wholesome to the bizarre to seriously fucked up? They are very, very often NOT what we literally want.
Being into dubcon or noncon doesn't mean you actually want to be raped or rape. Being into monsters doesn't make you a zoophile. And fantasizing about violent, obsessive men doesn't mean you wouldn't run as far the fuck away from a man like that the second one of them set their sights on you.
If you're really interested in the subject, I recommend reading My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday, a compilation of anonymously submitted women's sexual fantasies. And, as it turns out, women fantasize about a lot of really violent, uncomfortable, and just plain screwed up stuff.
And, for most of them, even when they don't actively realize it, it's about reclamation. Of fear, of trauma, of loss of power. It's about THEMSELVES and how THEY feel. As weird as it's gonna sound, the men featured in those fantasies don't really matter, they're just a vessel, a manifestation of the extreme version of what you're dealing with and/or crave. A safe, cathartic way to experience something profoundly unsafe, unwise, and terrifying.
For women fantasizing about criminals, villains, monsters, and anti-heroes, it's very often about the idea that someone like that - intense, violent, with single-minded focus, and immense power - would love her, want her, always put her first, go against all his instincts/training for you without a second thought and be a clear and present danger to everyone but warmth and safety for her and only her, and burn the world itself down for hurting her in even the slightest of ways. It's a sexual version of the fantasy of having a pet tiger, one that would never, ever attack you or hurt you in any way.
And just like the people who want to boop the forbidden snoot, the women fantasizing about their fantasy Mafia Boss Lover are very well aware of the fact that 1) men like that don't actually exist, 2) the criminal world of their fantasy has all but nothing to do with reality, and 3) that the thing they're actually fantasizing about is being loved, wanted, and safe... just in a REALLY intense, exaggerated way. And, let's not mince words, there's also often a more or less strong D/s dynamics at play in the scenario, too.
Now, you can choose to be judgy bitches about it (goodness knows plenty of you in the replies, comments, and tags are), in which case I would suggest you examine why you're feeling such a profound need to shame women for enjoying themselves in their own little world, or you can apply the YKINMKATO mantra and understand that straight women, living in the constant state of preyhood, sometimes consciously or subconsciously reclaim power over that situation through transgressive sexual fantasies.
Also, fuck this idea that queer people only fantasize about healthy and wholesome relationships, romantic, sexual, or otherwise, as if at least half of Tumblr isn't simping for, oh, for example, Hannibal fucking Lecter. Do you have ANY idea how many Mafia and Thug BL content there is out there?! FFS, Tom of Finland, a WWII veteran who fought against Nazis, drew art of exaggeratedly masculine men in Nazi uniforms in pornographic situations as a way to dissociate himself from those traumas and fascists themselves as far back as the 1950s!
So yeah. Less judgement, and more taking some responsibility for curating your online experience if seeing someone's kink truly offends you this much.
#humans#there's also something here about healing from repressive cultures and purity culture#by fantasizing outside of what's Allowed#fantasizing about a sweet small town hallmark movie guy who looks like he'd be good with kids is somewhat tainted#because that's what was expected of you. forced on you#purity culture is about conforming to what's allowed at the expense of actual desire and pleasure#the thing about a taboo fantasy is that it's YOUR fantasy#and like dubcon/noncon is about the desire thing as well#what if someone WANTED you#it's not about a one to one translation of the thing to real life—it's something that has meaning inside the context of your inner world#when you grow up with purity culture the conventional nice vanilla fantasies can FEEL gross and scary and coercive#in evangelical purity culture desire is BAD and you shouldn't pursue what you Want sexually#sex is about emulating a social norm whether you like it or not#so the tame and 'vanilla' fantasies often have this coercive feeling and it's very hard to explore desire and pleasure like that#therefore lots of people fantasize about being fucked by an alien or mafia boss or werewolf or vampire or something else safely imaginary#thats my read of the situation anyway#nazi mention
I'm going to try to explain this without sounding completely deranged but like, okay: IMO, there are two kinds of fantasies. let's call them horses and unicorns.
a horse fantasy is something that is theoretically possible. I do not currently own a horse, and the reality of owning a horse would involve boring stuff like paying for its food and mucking out its stall, but it is something I could do in real life. like, horses exist and can be owned by humans. lots of fantasies can fall into this category: traveling to a foreign country, living in a cute house with just you and a cat, winning a marathon, basically anything that is technically achievable even if it would be difficult to do so in real life.
a unicorn fantasy is something that is definitely (or almost definitely) impossible. I do not currently own a unicorn, and there is no version of reality where I could own a unicorn, because unicorns are not real. the actual logistical issues that might arise from owning a unicorn, like paying for its food or mucking out its stall, are completely immaterial because it's not something that could ever actually happen. and like, it's in my brain! I control it! I can imagine a unicorn that only eats marshmallows and shits potpourri if I want to!
I think the disconnect comes in when people assume that a unicorn fantasy is actually a horse fantasy. to use the tiger example from upthread: you can own a tiger. you can't have a completely domesticated tiger that would never hurt you, not even by accident. so saying "I want a pet tiger" is a unicorn fantasy, because everything necessary for that fantasy to work (it being completely domesticated and incapable of harming you) are not things you can have in real life.
now, serial killers/war criminals/normal criminals/etc. are all things that exist. and there are definitely people in relationships with them in real life! so it's tempting to assume that something like "I want to fuck a serial killer" is a horse fantasy: something you would want to do, and could do, if given the opportunity.
but for the vast majority of people, that's not the fantasy. the rest of the fantasy ("he's a serial killer, BUT he only kills bad people and he's nice to me and is both able and willing to protect me from literally anything and has sex exactly the way I want to because he magically knows what I want because, again, this is happening in my brain") is what makes it a unicorn.
This is obviously not exclusively a cishet woman thing but cishet women do deal with a different flavour of sexual repression than queer folks (not better or worse, just a different flavour!) and those fantasies really are about power, just not how you think.
The fantasy is that here is a powerful, aggressive, even violent man, and he wants you and needs you so much that he would burn the world down for you. The central fantasy of the romance novel is that the heroine is so desired and loved by the hero that he is both metaphorically and literally forced to his knees for her. I'm not with my books or notes right now so I can't remember the exact quote, but I think it was Jayashree Kamblé who said that this aggressive/Alpha male subtype of romance heroes is "a lion among men who is a lamb before his woman". That's the fantasy. It's really powerful! If your life experience has told you to expect to do all the care work and to minimise yourself and your needs to be palatable to others and to be grateful for any crumb of attention because you're too fat or too outspoken or just generally not perfectly feminine enough, the fantasy of someone going absolutely feral because they want you so much is really powerful and empowering!
Again, not exclusively cishet women, and also sometimes you just think a scenario would be hot if it happens within your mind where you are 100% in control and can just stop if it feels bad. That's also fine! That's normal! We need to stop shaming people for their romantic or sexual fantasies, especially those of us who clearly have no idea what a fantasy is and what it does for the person indulging in it 🙄
A lot of the "you're supposed to like X" cultural baggage is, IMHO, effectively dubcon with the coercion outsourced to some other actor, usually society, but with the "love interest" willingly profiting from that coercion, at your expense.
The effect is something like when you've got a persistent unwanted suitor doing "romantic" shit like sending you flowers at work and lovebombing you and otherwise making a big deal out of his feelings and your coworkers or your family or your friends are all encouraging you to give in because "it's so sweet" or "he wants you so badly, it's cruel of you to deny him" or "I wish my boyfriend did that for me, you're so lucky" and none of them will understand that a) what they want isn't what you want and b) the persistence, the control, the disregard for your wishes all make him the romantic equivalent of food that's been pissed on---and neither does he.
The whole effect is viscerally uncomfortable, and even the echoes or memories of coercion taint the whole concept.
And I think a key factor in the fantasy is a variant of that unicorn situation up above, to wit:
Your church, family, repressive upbringing, and/or purity-focused socialization will never approve of you dating a mob boss or a monster
Therefore
Your church, family, repressive upbringing, and/or purity-focused socialization will never force you to date a mob boss or a monster.
Therefore
Your fantasy about the mob boss or the monster is effectively free from the coercion you're used to in your real life and trying to escape.
It is, ironically, coercion-repellent, directed at the existing dynamics of coercion that might be present in your life or in your past.
Have you ever cried over the death of a fictional character?
Yes
No
Voting ended onSep 25, 2024
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once i was presenting research at a conference where everyone who received money from a specific grant had to go to basically be like “and here’s what we’re doing with your money.”
and there was a team there presenting on astrophysics and I truly barely understood a thing they said. my team was there to talk about salamander eDNA, and the juxtaposition between Space Math and swabbing salamanders with cotton-tips just struck me as deeply funny.
Later some of the Space people came by and asked us all about the salamanders and one of them said, “I can’t imagine working with animals and water. It’s all so messy. I don’t know how you stay sane with those variables?”
And I was like, “dude I didn’t even know the math you talked about today even existed.”
And we were both just like 🤝 “love your work. huge fan. I’d rather die than do it though.”
a really key part of any healthy relationships is nonsexual biting. it’s really important to just bite each other sometimes. it will keep your relationship alive biting is the stuff love is made of
Sure thang. Lately I’ve been working between four brushes in particular.
Two I flex between for sketching depending on the mood. The graphite texture one keeps me loose because it’s tricky to focus on small details but great for movement - and often like the result enough to keep in the final. The other is just a really responsive scribbly thing and I love to build stuff up with it.
Next two are firm faves. My usual crisp clean liner, and my colour blending painter - which I used for the whole bg on this thing (that thin sliver example doesn’t show much)
I also like, block in flat colours using that liner, it’s a pretty solid all rounder.
centaurs are enough of a pain to draw on their own, lets add interactions to the mix!
I'm generally trying to get better at figures interacting in a way that feels solid, cause who doesn't want more snuggles in the world 💜
The large rabbit kneels down, until he was crouching eye to eye with Toothless. Something wordless passes between them and the Night Fury makes a low, chirping noise. The rabbit - a Pooka - nods as if understanding the dragon perfectly.
"Yeah, I know a thing or two about being the last of your kind."
Green lightning fizzes to life between the knuckles of Aster's padded paw. He allows the energy dance from claw to claw before sending it towards Toothless. With a squawk, resembling an overgrown bird more than a dragon, Toothless hastily flaps back, in an attempt to dodge. But the green energy lands without a sound on his nose. Toothless blinks, going cross-eyed for a second.
"Uh... What did you just do?" Hiccup asks, trying not to panic.
Aster wipes down his muzzle and offers a shrug. "Just a blessing. Not much more I can do, being so far from home."
"Since when can you bless stuff?" Jack pipes in, his carefree smile putting Hiccup at ease. "You've been holding out on me, Roo."
"You never needed it," Aster snorts.
"Well, go on, share with the class." Jack elbows his friend.
"Rack off." Aster leans away, rolling his eyes. "I told ya - it ain't much. Just... Whenever this fella decides to have hatchlings, he can have plenty, and they'll be strong, little blighters. No dud egg for him." Then Aster tosses a coy look at Jack, then at Hiccup, then back to Jack. "'Course if you insist, I could always give you that same blessing."
Jack's blush sweeps up his cheeks to the roots of his hair. Hiccup blinks, puts the pieces, then turns a bright red himself.
Oh. Aster just gave Toothless a fertility charm? spell? Oh. Oh wow.
Nicholas St. North
"Is... Did that dragon sculpture move?" Hiccup points. He wasn't supposed to say that. He was supposed to have some kind of serious conversation with the new trader. He was supposed to iron out an agreement like his Dad did with Johann, or barring that, get info about dragon hunter movement in the archipelago. But all that prep went flying out the window when Hiccup set foot on the infamous Santoff Claussen ship.
The rumors were not only true, but actually underplayed the wondrous things that North had in his ship. That was a dragon made out of metal! It was about the size of his palm and sculpted from thin sheets of iron? no, can't be! The sheets were as thin as his fingernails, and interlocked in a near seamless fashion! And more importantly, the metal dragon moved!
Somehow, Hiccup crossed through the whole ship just to study this metallic marvel. He could hear some kind of ticking - gears? Those sounded like gears. Whatever internal mechanisms were allowing this metal sculpture to move, flapping its wings and swishing its tail.
He hears a deep, rumbling laughter as a hand claps him on the shoulder. "Yes, is toy!"
Hiccup turns to the new trader, North. "Toy? Did you say toy?"
Bright blue eyes twinkled. "Yes, you like? I give to you. No cost."
Aaaaand that's totally not suspicious at all. "Why? Is it cursed?"
Again, there's that booming laugh. "Cursed? No! I guarantee. Made myself!"
Hiccup's eyes threatened to pop out of his skull. "You made that!" He glances back at the apparently toy dragon, then back to North, who rivaled Stoik in size and bulk. Those thick fingers somehow shaped all those delicate parts? There's no way!
"Yes, I tell no lie!" North scoops up the metal dragon, pressing some hidden lever to pop open the belly. Inside, as Hiccup guessed, there was a clump of interconnected gears click-click-clicking away. "See, what I do is..."
By the time North is done explaining, and Hiccup has stopped asking his endless questions, the sun had fully set and it was too late for North to conduct any business with Berk. Hiccup didn't even notice the hours passing until he walks outside and it's already night time.
Toothiana
Once Toothiana was well enough to walk, but not yet fly, Valka showed off the rest of her home. Well, not that she's showing off really. She's just being a good host. Not that she's hosted anything in the last twenty years so really, what does she know about hosting? Ahem. Right. So.
Keeping Toothiana's hand tucked in her elbow, she guides the other woman into the heart of the sanctuary. Valka watches as Toothiana's crown feathers fluff up as her jewel-like eyes open wide, drinking in the sight of so many dragons flying about. It's clear that she forgets herself for she slips out of Valka's hold, and nearly throws herself off the edge. Luckily, her foot catches on something and she topples over before anything bad could happen. That doesn't stop Valka from running over and gently pulling her up from the ground.
"Oh, sorry! I - My wings -!" Toothiana dissolves into helpless giggles, but Valka can pick up just the slightest note of distress.
"Well, you wouldn't be the first to go flying off in such a state." Idly, she plucks a leaf caught on one of Toothiana's feathers, right where an ear should be. How curious. "A creature of flight hates being grounded, as I have learned."
Toothiana tilts her head, eyeing the leaf in Valka's fingers before looking at Valka herself. "That's awful. Those dragon hunters..." Something dark crosses her expression, her gaze going distant. "I suppose... somethings are the same no matter where you go."
Valka frowns. Despite their very brief acquaintance, she has come to know the other woman as a bright, sweet soul. The shine of her cheer is rivaled only by the way her plumage soaks in sunlight. Seeing sorrow in Toothiana twists something in her guts.
"We'll get your wings sorted out," Valka tells her, scrounging up all the confidence she had. "You'll be up with the rest of them in no time."
Toothiana's look refocuses on her, smiling softly. And Valka... Well, she's staring. She knows she's staring. But Valka has never encountered anything like Toothiana. There's just so much to see, so much to study. Valka resists the urge to simply comb her hand through those feathers.
Toothiana laughs, truly this time. "Well, I'm no dragon. I wouldn't wish to intrude."
"You're as lovely as one. It's really no wonder those dragon hunters came after you. They probably figured you were a new species."
"As lovely as a dragon," Toothiana echoes.
Valka blinks as her mind catches up. Then she snaps her head to the side, unable to meet Toothiana's eyes. Right. That's not something one usually says. Dragons are considered many things - strong, ferocious, even frightening! But they are hardly thought to be lovely.
She feels a soft hand rest on hers, prompting Valka to glance at Toothiana.
"You are very kind. Despite the... circumstances, I'm glad to have met you."
what is it with able bodied people saying “get well soon” after you say that you’re chronically ill?? like? i am not gonna? and i once literally responded with “i’m not gonna, it’s chronic, as in permanent.” and they went like “oh well, hope you get better!” like bro 💀
Speaking for me personally (and also as someone who has their own chronic health issues), most of it is, as someone mentioned in the replies, script failure. Humans have a lot of scripts and shorthands for social interactions, and the most common one for finding out someone is ill or injured is to wish them a swift recovery. There isn't really a script for how to respond when someone won't recover tho, and so many people end up falling back on the script they do know even if it's not really applicable.
In my own personal experience, when I end up saying - or feeling the impulse to say - 'get well soon' to someone with a chronic condition, what I'm really trying to convey is something more along the lines of 'I hope your good days outnumber the bad ones', and 'I hope you find treatment that is effective for and accessible to you', and especially 'hey the fact that you are in pain sucks and I wish you weren't but I know that's not likely to change soon but also I hope that it will anyway because I hate to see people suffering and the 5-year-old inside me is insisting it's not fair even though the adult me knows that's not how it works but anyway the point is I hope you're in as little pain as it's possible for you to be in'. All of which is quite a bit harder to fit on a greeting card than 'get well soon', and which don't have any conveinent shorthands that will let me express those sentiments in a concise, understandable manner.
thank you so much for explaining this! i saw the “script failure” reply but didn’t really understand what that meant & also didn’t have the time before to further ask.
but this actually makes sense and i think i’ll try to just take it to mean things like that whenever someone wishes me well/a swift recovery now! again, thank you so much!!
