A Growing Resemblance to a Daffodil

Queer cross stitching feminist nerd who is probably too old for this website. AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lelarin/works I mostly write elaborate love letters to Keladry of Mindelan

[specialagentartemis]

Knightposting does nothing for me but, musing on it, the service/duty-based archetype that really gets me is The Captain.

The Captain is a leader of a smallish group in a bounded environment; spaceship captain is the canonical version to me, here. The Captain has authority, she is undeniably the authority figure in this space and she expects her commands to be obeyed, but that authority is a contract. It comes with the knowledge that she uses that authority for the good of her crew.

The Captain is dutiful: her duty is to her mission second, and her crew first. Everything else, including her own personal feelings and desires, comes third. The Captain takes her duty as commander seriously and has a strong sense of responsibility. She is responsible for what happens to each one of her crew, responsible for their lives and safety, responsible for their failures and deaths. And she takes the weight of that responsibility seriously too.

The Captain is fair: her expectations may be high but she isn’t capricious. She does not ask her crew to do anything she wouldn’t do herself, and in the case of a crisis The Captain is ready to go down with her ship, making sure that everyone else gets out first.

The Captain isn’t so much a fantasy to be, more the fantasy of serving under. The Captain is the fantasy of having a boss who would die for you, rather than your real life boss who would probably sell you to Satan for one corn chip.

[silvermoon424]

Bro absolutely COOKED with this.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

If you ever hear the phrase "fascism is aesthetics as politics," that's what this post is talking about.

It's not about being tough on crime, because the absolute toughest most brutal measure you could take against "crime" as a social problem is to alleviate poverty, and increase access to education, healthcare and social mobility.

It's about performing "tough on crime" as an aesthetic by enacting violence against a prop, i.e. minorities and the impoverished, who are fetishized and objectified to represent "crime." They are brutalized as punishment for crime, but never with the purpose of alleviating the problem of crime.

This is why a lot of conservatives and other right wingers can get straight up angry when you suggest things like reform or social measures to reduce crime. They don't want crime to be reduced, they want an eternal war against "crime" because it provides an arena for the righteous to demonstrate virtue by brutalizing their enemies.

[minuiko]

PS: fullview to read

[minuiko]

I guess I’m just in a Neal/Kel mood ^.^

A sort of behind-the-scenes possibility? Someone had to have carried Kel to the pallets in between the scene when she faints after killing Blayce and when she wakes up .

- description x-posted from dA

[idrissisbonkers]

Take a WILD guess what my fav ship is—

[osterby]

AO3 Fanfiction Reading Habits by Length and Completion Status

This informal survey aims to gather statistics on the length and completion status readers on AO3 prefer for fanfic. The survey is not aff

I put together a relatively short survey (about two dozen questions, mostly multiple choice, all optional) to get some data on what fic lengths and completion statuses readers on AO3 prefer or avoid. If I get enough answers to have a good sample size, it should give us some insight into how people search and read on the archive.

If you find this interesting, feel free to share it with AO3 users elsewhere or post it to other platforms. I'd like to get a good crossection of readers that isn't biased by platform, if at all possible.

The survey is just for fun/curiosity, and isn't associated with any university, company, or other entity. It's just me asking you this stuff here :)

I'm not putting a deadline on this, I'll just let it run until I've got some good numbers, but whenever I do have enough I'll post the results here. You can track this post to watch for that update.

[noah-wyles]

this is such a fantastic and reassuring response

[detectivehole]

unless its egregious, i'm not embarrassed to be fooled by ai. "oh i got lied to via something made by the Lying Machine the machine we made to Lie really well" like it's gonna happen it's no egg on your face. just be chill about it

[detectivehole]

don't get me wrong. it's always devastating always humbling. no one wants to fall for the lying machine it just sounds bad. but you can't dwell

[existennialmemes]

I don't think it's unreasonable for our public officials to be expected to prove they're alive and not in a coma to be able to retain their office.

If someone were, as a random example, say hospitalized for over two weeks with no explanation, I think that should automatically trigger a special election to replace them.

If you're still able to do your job, then prove it. And if you're not, then you're actively obstructing democracy by not stepping down.

Which is to say, that if a public official were to pass away or into a coma, and their handlers choose to obfuscate that fact, this should be seen as intentionally obstructing democracy.

And there should be, you know, consequences for the people who would do such a thing.

[mxjackparker]

One of the (lower-ranked but still important!) reasons I think people should learn a second language if they are monolingual is to viscerally understand the frustration that comes with trying to explain yourself in a language you don't speak well and are learning, and so they know that broken spoken language doesn't mean anything about someone's level of intelligence or interiority.

[chimaerakitten]

While I love all types of female fantasy protagonists, every time I encounter one who (in notable contrast to male characters around her) is only useful in a fight because of nonphysical magic superpowers, I pause for a moment to appreciate Kel, who manages to be a protagonist in an insane monsters-and-magic-filled fantasy world purely on the strengths of

1. Being 6’6”

2. Bringing a giant fuckoff Japanese polearm to every sword fight.

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[minuiko]

TCP POTS Comic (FINISHED)

[minuiko]

TCP POTS Comic (FINISHED)

[minuiko]

pretty cool old farts. I need to learn to color.

[yak-leather-whips]

I think a lot about the different things Tamora Pierce’s various series have to say about the education system and how it treats kids. I think it shows a really interesting collection of ideas that I think reflect a lot about the time they were written and Tamora’s own evolving ideas.

Like, obviously we start with Alanna and SOTL, which is all about pure access. The question here is very simple: should girls get access to the education system? And the answer is equally simple: yes, obviously. This is a book about proving that these girls who have been denied access to the system can, in fact, succeed if given a chance. That girls are just as capable of doing well as boys are, and that they deserve the same opportunities as boys do. We are shown that with enough determination and support from the people close to her, Alanna can push through and beat these people at their own game.

Then we have circle of magic, where we are instead asking ourselves: what about kids who aren’t able to succeed inside that system? Not every kid is Alanna. Some kids are never going to be able to brute force their way through the system as she did. Not because they’re not as smart as her or as determined, but because they’re different. The system is never going to work for them, so the only way forward is to remove them from the system. And in doing that, these kids find success no one in the system ever dreamed possible for them.

Then we get to Kel and protector of the small, and we finally get to ask what in my mind are the real questions. Rather that a pure question of whether she has access to the system, Kel is also questioning the value of the system itself. How it treats the people inside it and those supporting it, like Lalasa. She is looking at the system and instead of accepting it at face value, she asks why it works the way it does, and if it hurts so many people and privileges bad behavior, is this the right way? And if it’s not, what does a better way look like, and what does it take to change it?

Idk, i just think our evolving understanding and ever changing relationship with progressive movements of the past is such a cool part about our society, and I love that you can see that here

[aladygrieve]

Obviously Alanna and Kel face vastly different challenges in pretending to be a boy vs. openly training as a girl, but what I find even more interesting is the difference in their motivations. Alanna became a knight because she didn't want to become a lady. She wanted Glory and Adventure and Grand Heroism, but in a remote and almost abstract sense.

Which is cool. But Kel became a knight because she really wanted to be a knight, with all the day-to-day drudgery that entails. I mean, look at Squire: she spends most of that book head to toe in mud helping poor people in crisis and she loves it and I think that's kind of amazing.