(possibly) five kobolds in a coat

Name's Jay, pronouns he/him. You might also know me as Meridok or Ganymeme (on AO3). Personal + fannish blog. See my pinned post for details & tagging. White Canadian trying to be anti-racist & anti-fascist & stand in solidarity w Indigenous ppl, #LandBack, the personal is political. Sidebar image art by @annaleigh

[fellshish]

i’m so glad goncharov happened pre ai slop era

[romanitas]

#weird way to describe 1973 but i guess it’s accurate

[book-historia]

Ah yes, the three genders

[heroineimages]

I love used bookstore labeling.

[tomthefanboy]

aka the Phil Foglio Section

[bunnayy]

What country is '🏳️‍⚧️' and why are all the cute boys from there

[stonelionhearts]

i think as a writer, the older you get and the more you read, the more you realize there are very few actual truly bad ideas. which is a relief. but! the other thing you learn is that stories live and die on the execution and ha ha. lemme tell you. unfortunately. there are lots and lots of bad ways to execute an otherwise fine idea

[scarlet--wiccan]

May 16 is Romani Resistance Day, which commemorates the uprising of Roma and Sinti prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In May of 1944, Roma and Sinti prisoners staged an armed resistance against the planned "liquidation" of the gypsy camps, which would have led to the mass murder of approximately 6,000 Romani. Thanks to the efforts of the Roma and Sinti interned at Auschwitz, these execution plans were staggered and delayed for several months. We hold this day to honor their bravery, mourn their deaths, and memorialize that which the Romani community endured under the Nazi regime.

You can learn some more about Romani Resistance Day, and the ongoing effort to preserve the Berlin memorial to murdered Roma and Sinti against Deutsche Bahn's railroad development, by listening to this episode of Smith's Kushti Podcast.

The ERRC's Romani Tea Room has also put out an episode collecting stories from descendants of Romani Holocaust survivors.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Tales of Roma Women’s Resistance-- FRIDA

Romani Resistance Day Is About More Than Memory-- Margareta Matache

[sandmandaddy69]

[get-thee-to-a-shrubbery]

[ferret-on-pancakes]

[its-your-mind]

[miteistic]

[nick-nonya]

[cleanedupcorporationprogress]

[boothyghost]

[all-save-challenge]

I love this post especially the rat part

going on me feed

[trolleybusaberrations]

what do you mean there are exactly zero rats i. this post

[bingle-official]

[primordialsoupvendor]

[shower-thoughts-last-responder]

[definitely-not-a-plant]

[spectroacha]

DOES IT NOT STOP

[losthavenmine]

Harold Perrineau as Mercutio Romeo + Juliet (1996)

[rachelkatwalsh]

pov: you fell out of a nautiloid

inspired by that one house md promo image

[aplpaca]

big fan of when animals creche. Love to see so many fucking babies in one place

[aplpaca]

So a creche in ecology is a group of animals that take care of their offspring as a group. Grouping together like this can help with protection against predators, finding food, enduring the weather, and gives the parents time to "rest", as sometimes the parents will alternate who's being the primary watchers while others get to hunt by themselves for a bit, like a baby animal daycare.

But ye lions do this once cubs each a certain age. A decent amount of birds do it (for example: flamingos and a lot of penguin, duck, and goose species). Gharials (a type of South Asian crocodilian) form creches with hundreds of babies from multiple nests (they lay under 100 eggs each and sometimes as few as 20). Feral hogs tend to form groups of mothers and young like this, and I saw 3 sows and like 15+ tiny babies the other day and they were so cute

But ye that's how you get pictures like these

[tumorhead]

Rattlesnakes will creche!! In some species mature adult females will hang out together (they're friends!) in shared dens and even birth their clutches together. Then one will babysit while the others go get food. Adult females have been seeing caring for their young like shooing young back into the den when a predator approaches. You can watch LIVE rattlesnake den mothers and all their babies on Project Rattlecam!!!!

[genderkoolaid]

also the thing about "we need to focus on the people most vulnerable, and transmascs may be vulnerable but not more than trans women!" is that it doesn't consider transmasc erasure as an active force.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

this is why unlearning anti transmasculinity has to start from (un)learning erasure. once you start to see it as an active force/tool of the patriarchy you realize it is the lynchpin that holds so much (especially intercommunity) anti-transmasculinity together. transmaculine absence is so normalized people experience our presence as an intrusion, and people genuinely do not understand why we would ever need to be more visible than we are. it is fucking everywhere.

[genderkoolaid]

like idk i remember reading about a trans man in India who, after he came out to his family, was literally locked in a room in their house. just shut up in a basement somewhere, out of sight and out of mind, until he managed to escape (and even then, there's also a trans man in India whose parents sent the police to track him down and kidnap him from a shelter meant specifically for trans people).

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

that is the image of transmasculine erasure. it is boys and men locked in closets and basements and prison cells disguised as hospital rooms for years until they are dead and buried as women. if they even get a headstone at all. it is dead-eyed mothers with three children who have no income or job experience and are married to a cis man ten years older than them who they know would kill them, and possibly their children, if they even mentioned being trans. if you think of transmasc erasure or "invisibility" and imagine a white cis-passing guy working stealth at his office job, congrats! transmasculine erasure is already living like a fungus in your mind. i am trying to make you feel the horror the patriarchy has trained you out of feeling about the state of transmasculine oppression.

[one-hell-of-a-sheep]

why does oscar wilde take 150 pages to write something he could literally say in a paragraph

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

gay

[yurious-george]

compelling argument

[mossadspydolphin]

what does this say about victor hugo

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

no he was just french

[jam-the-hologram]

R.R Tolkien?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

autistic infodumping

[elden-12]

Put this together and I dread to think how long a novel by an autistic gay Frenchman would be. :p

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[magneatio]

the most disappointing thing about music is i can’t bite into it like an overripe peach

[magneatio]

i listen to music at full volume but i’m chasing the feeling of biting into a peach so ripe that the juice runs down your face but with music but with music but with music

[queerpyracy]

genuinely irritated about the prevalence of brother-sister character designs where the brother has a huge nose and the sister has a tiny nose. 1) why are you a coward who hates the joy and beauty of women with big noses 2) have you looked at any real human siblings lately 3) why do you appear to think the nose is a secondary sex characteristic

[queerpyracy]

wishing all women with big noses a beautiful day i hope you get everything you want forever and i'm sorry about the rank cowardice of general society you deserve better

[treebeardsrevenge]

"Mirkwood would judge Legolas so hard for Gimli-" Wrong. Gimly has consistently charmed the pants off every single elf he's come across. The elves of Lothlorien went from wanting to kick him out to loving him in like 2 days. He's Galadriel's special little guy. My man is out there singlehandedly tearing down centuries of prejudice because he's just so damn charming. When he was nearing the end, he didn't even go to Durin's halls - he just went with Legolas to the undying lands so he could hang out with elves for the rest of time. Gimli would have Thranduil and the rest of the elves of Mirkwood wrapped around his dwarven finger in a week's time. Ideal son in law except for the beard.

[detectivebambam]

is this not what happened?

[icannotreadcursive]

I feel like there’s needs to be, like, handbook for authors who post on Ao3 for effective metatext.

By metatext I mean like tagging, summary, and authors notes (especially initial authors notes at the beginning of a fic). The means by which we communicate to our readers what they’re getting into.

Because we kind of all have to learn it by osmosis and there are conventions but nobody’s really taught them at the start, so there’s inconsistencies and misunderstandings or people just not knowing things through no fault of their own.

This ends up breeding frustration and confusion and in the worst cases resentment, hurt, and aggression.

I’m severely tempted to make such a handbook and get it circulating.

I think it would do fandom a lot of good.

[icannotreadcursive]

Good news, I’m writing it

[icannotreadcursive]

Update:

I’m at 9680 words, roughly 16 pages single spaced, with two or three sections to go.

[icannotreadcursive]

Update:

First draft done. 11,100 words, 29 pages with formatting

[icannotreadcursive]

The final draft is getting cleaned up right now. I’ll probably be figuring out how to post it tomorrow.

On which note, anybody know the best way to make a PDF available online?

[icannotreadcursive]

Okay it is done!

Go here for the PDF, or here to view the whole document as a tumblr post.

I recommend the PDF.

Related note: the post length limit on tumblr is apparently more than 13,000 words.

[mikkeneko]

Worth a read; even as a long-time fandom veteran I encountered things I didn’t know were in use, like the “& Related Fandoms” tags.

[twistcmyk]

R.I.P. JUNIPER BLESSING.

[thestuffedalligator]

It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.

[andhumanslovedstories]

#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’

I absolutely think it is

[seiya234]

I read Jingo for the first time when I was 13.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

Terry was a comedic genius

[stormsbreadth]

#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)

god DAMMIT

[adverbian]

When I was informed that “Vetinari” is a pun on “Medici”. That pun was so painful I couldn’t even see it.

[triflesandparsnips]

...are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

get out here Terry I just wanna talk

[amuseoffyre]

Twurp’s Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.

[deathsmallcaps]

OMG I FUCKING *KNEW* VETINARI WAS A JOKE ON FUCKONG SOMETHING I JUST COULDNT GRASP IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS A REFERENCE TO WIND SOMEHOW

[sarahreesbrennan]

I am not a talented punster so I was today old when I realised about Vetinari.

[fiollaigean]

guys it's fucking close to water

[aridotdash]

[jennyofmany]

Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "über/ hinüber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.

[arkytiorlecter]

The Venturi and Selachii feud is what killed me when I got it.

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

... fucking HELL Terry.

[nochd]

In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr boasts of having helped write the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum, the Auriga Clavium Maleficarum, and in fact the entire Arca Instrumentorum.

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

Malleus = "hammer" Torquus Simiae = "monkey wrench" Auriga Clavium = "bucket of nails" Arca Instrumentorum = "box of tools"