some different looks for our dear archivist

if i look back, i am lost
Not today Justin
we're not kids anymore.
Game of Thrones Daily
$LAYYYTER

ellievsbear
cherry valley forever

Discoholic 🪩
todays bird
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Kiana Khansmith
Sade Olutola
Acquired Stardust

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Sweet Seals For You, Always
trying on a metaphor

Love Begins
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
i don't do bad sauce passes
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@everythingbutthekitchensphinx
some different looks for our dear archivist
Natasia Demetriou as Nadja in What We Do In The Shadows FX
Lavender Blackberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and a Piped Floral Wreath
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Is this how you roll?
One story element I’d like to see more of is the targeted bride-price
Something like: the newly-widowed queen knows she and her daughter won’t be allowed to rule their country themselves, so she has to agree that her daughter be married. But she wants to ensure that her daughter gets a husband who will treat her well and that her land gets a ruler who will treat it well, so she rigs the game.
Mercedes Lackey did a most excellent job of this in her 500 Kingdoms book The Sleeping Beauty, where the final challenge of the tournament to win the princess’ hand is to find a way to permanently protect their small but rich country from their many greedy neighbors (the winning concept is brilliant, btw, I grin every time)
I’m thinking also of that neat comic with the witch who says she’ll marry whoever gets the key from around her cat’s neck–but she is also the cat, and the only way to get the key is to befriend her. that’s a really great example and also one of the few I can think of where the person is setting their own bride-price, double credit.
any of those ‘the youngest/weakest wins by being clever’ or ‘the kind one wins by getting help from allies they helped along the way’ stories have potential to qualify, but I want specifically the ones where the person setting the bride-price did it that way on purpose to ensure a clever or kind winner
same for any of those stories where the thing which must be retrieved is incredibly fragile and only a careful, gentle person could retrieve it
or it’s worth a fortune and only an honest, selfless person could pass it up for the quest, y’all get the idea
or, genre-swap: the mob boss has a handsome, powerful son, and all the other mob leaders keep trying to arrange for their beautiful eligible daughters to cross his path, and the mob boss says instead that the one who brings the most to the table will be allowed to marry their son
this phrasing I like because it’s got two possible subversions!
1) all the mob-parents keep trying to show off their resources and the boss gets to say ‘no, none of these count unless you’re trying to marry my son. what do your kids have to offer him’ and then whoever’s the most badass all on their own gets to win
or 2) mob-son is actually in love with a nice straight-arrow baker from down the road, who comes and brings a brace of pies literally to the table, and wins on a proper fairytale technicality
I just super dig the idea of taking the big heavy traditional concept of a bride-price (and the ensuant actual selling of a bride) and turning it instead into the mechanism by which a clever and caring person makes sure that they/their kid/their country will be safe and happy in the future
I’ve seen more than one adaptation of The 12 Dancing Princesses where the mysterious old woman who gives the soldier the invisibility cloak an warning not to drink the wine the princesses offer was actually the oldest princess in disguise because she was tired of dancing and wanted to choose her own hero to beak the curse
The Fair Wants You To Die🎪🎟🤢
Ok I lost it at fried water 😫🤣
“Fry an acoustic guitar & put chocolate sauce on it”
oh my god im reeling
Torsten Dettlaff
basically if youre in the place to educate yourself on these topics and you arent
a prison abolitionist,
a harm reductionist,
for decriminilization,
and giving the land back
i really do not think your assertions of “ACAB” or “be gay do crimes” or “revolution” hold much weight
this is getting a lot of questions that could be solved with a google search into any of these topics, so i just want to respond with my own that isn’t: if you advocate for abolishing the police force but don’t support prison abolition for [x] reason—what happens to prisons in a post-police society?
you might come up with several answers here.
shit, i don’t know. we need prisons as prisons are to A) withhold certain people from harming their communities, B) punish certain people, C) kill certain people.
uh, i guess i can kind of answer this. the criminal justice system still exists. why don’t we just leave those people in charge? they’re not cops! and we should definitely let people who have committed non-violent offenses go. drug charges are stupid.
ok, i feel a little more confident answering this. we need to change the prison model for the better and follow the example of countries with restorative justice practices. incarcerated people need better access to healthcare and education, as well as access to opportunifies post-prison so that they are less likely to face reincarceration.
wait. if we’re abolishing the police for upholding white supremacy and terrorizing marginalized communities, we need to abolish a lot of shit. restorative justice sounds cool, i agree with that guy above. but shouldn’t these efforts be run by the communities affected? wasn’t the problem a white supremacist state? wasn’t the goal community terrorism? wasn’t the power taken out of our hands, especially the hands of people being systematically criminalized? i think i have things to read about.
anyway, whatever your conclusion: here are some things to read about.
darkness matters: on the surveillance of blackness by simone brown
are prisons obsolete? by angela davis
the law is a white dog by colin dayan
gendering the carceral state: african american women, history, and the criminal justice system by kali n gross and cheryl d hicks
“indigenous space and decolonizing prison abolition” from the final straw radio podcast (this is an episode of a podcast featuring ni frontiers ni prison, an indigenous prison abolitionist group)
migra! a history of the us border control by kelly lyle hernandez
disability incarcerated by liat ben-moshe and allison c carey
queer (in)justice by joey l mogul, andrea j ritchie, and kay whitlock
crazy in america: the hidden tragedy of our criminalized mentally ill by mary beth pfeiffer
inventing the savage: the social construction of native american criminality by luana ross
criminal justice facts posted by the sentencing project
is prison necessary? an article featuring ruth wilson gilmore & explaining prison abolition to children who were very good at asking “but what about [x]?” questions
and here’s an FAQ about prison abolition by people against prisons aotearoa
and then another collection of links by the marshall project.
if you have trouble getting ahold of any reading materials i can usually find you a pdf if you DM me. if you need epub i can’t guarantee i can get one for you, but i can try.
beiny
A Geneticist's Invocation to the Ancestors
I honour my Ancestors, whose struggles and successes are written in my genome. I honour Mitochondrial Eve, Y Chromosome Adam, and the haplotypes that walked out of the cradle of humanity to every corner of the world.
To each and every Ancestor – who struggled and fought and lived and died – but never too soon to pass on their phenotype – through the mists of time, I salute you!
To LUCA, the cenancestor, the root of the Tree of Life, three billion years old – through the mists of time, I salute you!
To the first of the cells, born from the cradle of the RNA World – I salute you!
I find it incredibly moving, and humbling, to remember that I am, and we all are, merely the latest link in a chain of unbroken inheritance that reaches back to the very beginning of life. All the challenges that have been faced by three billion years of ancestry, written in our genomes.
Some definitions below the cut for those who need a quick primer on some of the stuff I mention in that invocation.
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The Psychopomp
My favorite professor quote of today: "Mysticism is like pornography: Everyone knows what it is but no one knows how to properly describe it"
Illustrations by Ejiwa Ebenebe (Edge)
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We really need to address the fact that women aren't more likely to be asexual than men. Ace men are more likely to be closeted especially to themselves because society tells them that they must be sexual/are sex obsessed/be attracted to people and in particular women. And it can be extrememly difficult to look at yourself and say "wow I guess I'm not the way society says I should be".
Ace men deserve mad respect for figuring themselves out.
fairy tale meme ❧ [2/8 heroines] little red riding hood
One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, “Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter.” Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.
An Ancient Greek Transgender Person
We read this passage in class yesterday and I thought it might interest youse guys. The passage is from Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans 5; it’s a discussion between Clonarium, a young man, and Leaena, a courtesan who had an unusual experience at a drinking party.
Eventually Megilla, being now rather heated, pulled off her wig, which was very realistic and fitted very closely, and revealed the skin of her head which was shaved close, just as on the most energetic of athletes. This sight gave me a shock, but she said, ‘Leaena, have you ever seen such a good-looking young fellow?’ ‘I don’t see one here, Megilla,’ said I. ‘Don’t make a woman out of me,’ said she. ‘My name is Megillus, and I’ve been married to Demonassa here for ever so long; she’s my wife.’ ‘Then, unknown to us, Megillus, you were a man all the time, just as they say Achilles once hid among the girls, and you have everything that a man has, and can play the part of a man to Demonassa?’ ‘I haven’t got what you mean,’ said she, ‘I don’t need it at all. You’ll find I have a much pleasanter method of my own.’ ‘You’re surely not a hermaphrodite,’ said I, ‘equipped both as a man and a woman, as many people are said to be?’; for I still didn’t know, Cleonarium, what it was all about. But she said, ‘No, Leaena, I’m all man.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard the Boeotian flute-girl, Ismenodora, repeating tales she’d heard at home, and telling us how someone at Thebes had turned from woman to man, someone who was also an excellent soothsayer, and was, I think, called Tiresias. That didn’t happen to you, did it?’ ‘No, Leaena,’ she said, ‘I was born a woman like the rest of you, but I have the mind and the desires and everything else of a man.’ ‘And do you find these desires enough?’ said I. ‘If you don’t believe me, Leaena,’ said she, ‘just give me a chance, and you’ll find I’m as good as any man; I have a substitute of my own. Only give me a chance, and you’ll see.’
Translation: M. D. Macleod, Loeb, 1961.
So Megilla - who, as a side note, is from Lesbos - was born a woman but identifies as a man, going by Megillus. Still, for some reason, they* disguise themselves as a woman. The whole situation is a bit confusing but the bolded bit is clear: Megilla/Megillus is, in modern terms, transgender.
Lucian’s Dialogues are fictional, but the fact he mentions a trans person speaks for their existence at the time. Remember that whenever people claim trans people are a recent phenomenon!
*I’m using they/them pronouns because it’s unclear exactly how they refer to themselves. Greek conjugated verbs are mostly non-gendered (so what the translation renders as ‘she said’ is actually ‘he/she/they said’), but there is one participle in the feminine (οὐδὲν ἐνδέουσάν με τῶν ἀνδρῶν, I’m as good as any man) despite Megilla/Megillus asking Leaena not to refer to them as a woman. So, unclear.
@polyamorous-lesbian
Hi, I’m OP. As of the time of writing, I’m finishing up a masters degree in Ancient Greek, and the history of LGBT+ people is something I’ve studied quite a bit over the last five years. I can confidently tell you that the assumptions you’re making in your reply don’t work here.
The text I quoted, Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, starts with Leaina (latinised above as Leaena) telling her friend Klonarion (latinised as Clonarium) about an experience she had at a drinking party. The very first thing Klonarion asks is whether Megillos/Megilla, the person Leaina hooked up with, is a woman attracted to women:
Καινὰ περὶ σοῦ ἀκούομεν, ὦ Λέαινα, τὴν Λεσβίαν Μέγιλλαν τὴν πλουσίαν ἐρᾶν σου ὥσπερ ἄνδρα καὶ συνεῖναι ὑμᾶς οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅ τι ποιούσας μετ᾿ ἀλλήλων.
We’re hearing strange things about you, Leaina, about how the rich Lesbian Megilla loves you like a man, and you live together and who knows what you do with each other.*
The fact this person is from Lesbos isn’t coincidental at all. “Lesbian” was well-known shorthand, in the ancient world, for women attracted to women - just like it is today. In this fictional dialogue, Lucian is using it to imply that Megillos/Megilla could be a lesbian in the modern sense, thereby acknowledging that they exist. Leaina replies:
Ἀληθῆ, ὦ Κλωνάριον· αἰσχύνομαι δέ, ἀλλόκοτον γάρ τί ἐστι.
That is true, Klonarion; but I am ashamed, since it is somewhat strange.
Ἀλλόκοτος is a word meaning strange, unusual, or different. (Actually, I might almost be tempted to translate it as “queer”.) Leaina is pointing out here that Klonarion is on the right track, but there’s more to the story than that. A bit further along, the dialogue continues:
Λ. Ἡ γυνὴ δὲ δεινῶς ἀνδρική ἐστιν. Κ. Οὐ μανθάνω ὅ τι καὶ λέγεις, εἰ μή τις ἑταιρίστρια τυγχάνει οὖσα· τοιαύτας γὰρ ἐν Λέσβῳ λέγουσι γυναῖκας ἀρρενωπούς, ὑπ᾿ ἀνδρῶν μὲν οὐκ ἐθελούσας αὐτὸ πάσχειν, γυναιξὶ δὲ αὐτὰς πλησιαζούσας ὥσπερ ἄνδρας. Λ. Τοιοῦτόν τι.
L: The woman is terribly manly. K: I don’t understand what you’re saying, unless she is some sort of female courtisan. They say there are women like that in Lesbos, who look like men, who don’t want anything to do with men, but have sex with women as if they were men. L: It’s somewhat like that.
Again, Klonarion - just like modern “gender critical” people! - doesn’t understand how this person could be anything but a gender-non-conforming lesbian woman. Leaina replies that it’s almost that, but not quite. She then starts telling Klonarion what happened, and this is where the passage I quoted above comes in. The most important element is this: Megilla publicly presents as a woman, but privately identifies as a man and uses the name Megillos.
Let’s repeat that to be extra clear: Megillos is not a lesbian woman presenting as male for safety. They** are a person assigned female at birth, but who prefers to identify as male in the safety of their own home.
Leaina compares them to mythological figures in an attempt to understand better, asking if Megillos is a man disguised as a woman, like Akhilleus (whose mother hid him among the girls in the hopes that he wouldn’t be drafted to war). Megillos says no. Leaina asks if Megillos is a hermaphrodite; Megillos also says no. Lastly, Leaina mentions Tiresias, who was born female but was transformed by the Gods into a man, to which Megillos replies that they weren’t transformed in that way, but:
… ἐγεννήθην μὲν ὁμοία ταῖς ἄλλαις ὑμῖν, ἡ γνώμη δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία καὶ τἆλλα πάντα ἀνδρός ἐστί μοι.
I was born female like all of you, but I have the mind and the desires and everything else of a man.
This explanation has nothing to do with wanting the same rights as a man (especially since Megillos publicly presents as the female Megilla). It has nothing to do with gender-non-conforming presentation either. Megillos is very, very clearly expressing an inner sense of gender, which is male.
So let’s summarise:
Lucian, the author of this dialogue, is well aware of the existence of lesbian women, including gender-non-conforming lesbian women
however, he makes Leaina’s character point out that while this situation is similar, it isn’t about that
Megillos/Megilla publicly identifies as female and is publicly viewed as a lesbian woman, which renders impossible any interpretation that they present as male for safety or extra rights
privately, they explicitly state that their inner sense of gender is male despite being assigned female at birth
which is literally the definition of transgender: “having a gender (identity) which is different from the sex one was assigned at birth” (x)
This text is fictional; Megillos/Megilla never existed. However, Lucian’s dialogues reflect the everyday life and daily concerns of his era, and there’s no reason to believe that this text is an exception. In fact, if we look beyond him to the rest of the ancient world, we’d be quick to realise that people fitting the modern definitions of transgender and genderqueer - both AMAB and AFAB, and probably intersex too - are well-attested, from Inanna’s gala priests in the 2nd millennium BC to the Roman emperor Elagabalus in the 3rd century AD. It would be narrow-minded to attribute millennia of non-cisgender people to just misogyny and oppression.
Turns out that people have always been complicated, gender has always been complicated, and if you fail to recognise that, you find yourself in the uncomfortable position of being less accepting than Lucian, a man from the 2nd century AD.
*All translations are my own.
**As explained in the previous post, I’m using they/them pronouns because it’s unclear which grammatical gender Megillos/Megilla uses, despite clearly identifying as male.
Illustrations by Ejiwa Ebenebe (Edge)
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