Here to get my virtual horse fix

Mid 20s, south African in the UK, rides English but too poor to own a horse

[ruinedchildhood]

[sephiramy]

me messaging a casual acquaintance: hello, how are you?

me messaging a best friend w/zero lead-in:

[toastweasel]

[fiction-is-not-reality]

In bigger letters for those in the back:

As a critiquer, your job is not to “make this piece of writing better” but to understand what the writer wants to achieve and help them to achieve it

[notactuallyaduck]

Applies beyond writing as well.

[jordanlhawk-deactivated20260503]

Also applies to editing. I was recently talking to another writer whose editor (at a publisher) almost destroyed her desire to keep writing. Writers, know the signs of a shitty editor versus one who actually wants to help you achieve your vision, and don’t be afraid to ask for a different one. (Or fire a bad one if you’re indy.)

[pettycentral]

[headspace-hotel]

narnia has actually way too many completely devastating concepts in it that are not explored At All

[headspace-hotel]

We talk a lot about how in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children live full adult lives as kings and queens of narnia before stumbling out of the wardrobe by accident and being children again after like 15+ years. But I’ve never seen the same level of analysis devoted to how in Prince Caspian they return to Narnia and discover that over 1,000 years have passed in Narnia since their last visit.

Imagine undergoing the grief of losing an entire life you lived in another world, being forced back into the body of a child and to grow up all over again without the ability to even talk about what happened in the decades you lost. Every person you knew and loved, vanished, leaving no indication they were ever real and no guide for how to move on.

But returning to that world where you were a King or Queen and discovering that centuries have passed without you and that the people you lost are not only dead, but mostly aren’t even remembered? That’s almost worse.

[headspace-hotel]

That series is really something for “worldbuilding threads picked up and never touched again” too like

in the silver chair it’s confirmed that deep underneath the earth in narnia there’s a molten, fiery abyss world called Bism that is apparently populated and also apparently gemstones are living creatures that live there, and what we understand as diamonds, emeralds, rubies etc. are just the discarded husks of once living creatures

Jadis is actually not originally from Narnia, but accidentally gets sent there at its creation (making her one of the oldest beings in narnia) and she annihilated all life in her world of origin. she also very much does go to literal actual London and terrorize people. she is like 7 feet tall and can tear iron with her bare hands like it’s taffy.

Jadis makes it “Always winter and never Christmas”…what the FUCK is her beef with Father Christmas. I know it’s supposed to be like a metaphor or some shit but I’m imagining what exactly the fuck must have happened between them for jadis to specifically want to prevent him from coming to narnia to the extent that her powerful seasonal-change-stopping magic also includes a “fuck that guy in particular” clause.

like think about it, Jesus is not a thing in narnia, he’s just aslan. and aslan did not get born. ergo, the origin of such a concept as Christmas is the entity Father Christmas. Christmas is not a religious holiday to Narnians it has no symbolic meaning it is just specifically the time of year when Father Christmas fucks around across the landscape giving children gifts, such as very deadly real weapons. There’s no reason for him to do this. It’s just what he does. And Jadis fucking hates it.

another thing from the magicians nephew that is never brought up again is that Polly and Digory don’t go directly to Narnia, they end up in this intermediate place between the worlds that’s like a forest full of pools leading to other worlds, potentially infinite other worlds, and they end up in Narnia pretty much at random.

I think it’s also confirmed that Archenlanders were originally from Earth, and are the descendants of a small group of people who traveled to Narnia by accident and got stuck. One wonders why Aslan didn’t whisk them back out. Or why being too old wasn’t a problem for them.

I think this is early installment weirdness but there are Roman gods in narnia. ?????

stars are sentient???

narnia is flat. this is not actually an unresolved thread but I don’t think it’s common knowledge even though in one of the books they literally sail to the edge of the world. caspian specifically thinks it’s super cool that the earth is round

[athoughtfox]

I LOVE the whole concept of Bism. Like Lewis really just said oh yeah there’s a whole world under Narnia where people live and jewels are alive too actually you wear dead ones in your jewellery and then no one ever spoke about it again, not even the fandom

No wonder this series infuriated Tolkien so much. Lewis just threw paint at a wall and jokingly asked the man who’d spent a decade on a single painting if he liked it.

[fireladyofink]

Holy shit there is a lot about Narnia I don’t know.

[marlinspirkhall]

Writer’s block? Why not try peppering panpsychism into your atheist-turned-christian young adult literature and never addressing it again?

[narnia-renaissance]

So many fics, so little time.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Fun fact about the woods between worlds thing and what the inspiration behind it was:

This is an illustration of it from the book.

And THIS is a forest full of shell craters from WW1. Which C.S Lewis fought in as a teenager.

[bllbabaggins]

I’m sorry @stargirl-and-potts I couldn’t leave your tags there 🥹

[awkwardsituationist]

high tide and low tide in great britain. photographs by michael marten

[bigbigtruck]

quotes taken from the source

(the 4th one is Bumpus wanting dinner, friends can back me up on this)

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

come back to me most perfect of comics

[irishshauna]

[marmotini-of-the-world-unite]

Learning this was an intentional genocide changed me.

[fighterkimburgess]

I know most of those following me know this, but just to make it super clear. An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger/the Great Famine) was a deliberate genocide of the Irish people. There was enough food grown in Ireland to make sure everyone was alive and healthy and survived. Instead it was exported, sent to England and elsewhere for profit while men, women, and children starved in the streets. While the English landlords fucked off and evicted starving families who couldn’t afford rent. While babies were too weak to cry and died at the side of the road.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. And we owe so much thanks to the other oppressed peoples, in particular the Choctaw Nation and the Masai, who sent money and grain to us.

Let me repeat that. The Choctaw Nation who had just gone through the Trail of Tears sent us money to try save Irish lives. It’s led to an understanding between Irish people and Native American tribes, most recently when we donated to the Navajo and Hopi fundraisers for COVID-19 relief, because while it may be a different tribe, Irish people will never forget those who helped us and we’ll help back.

The entire population of the island is less than seven million people. We’re still a million less on this island than pre famine. And it’s not that long ago. My grandmother’s grandparents lived through it. We’ve told the stories, it literally changed the DNA of the country. We have a national fear of renting, because so many people were evicted. People joke about Irish people always offering loads of food, but it’s because there’s that cultural memory of not being able to.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. We will not let them take our lives, we will not let them take our language. We lost so much, but we will not lose it all.

[saltedweather]

This is why I get so angry when people say “it was the potato famine, it was because of monoculture/microbes.”

Nope. The potatoes were the only thing Irish people were allowed to fucking eat, because as pointed out, the rest of the crops they were growing were for their landlords to ship to England. So when the one “worthless” crop they were allowed to eat rotted in the field, the English crown, empire, landlords, all shrugged and carried on. People starved to death lying next to productive fields.

[graceking]

I love these comics by Nathan W. Pyle.

[patrickdiomedes]

Here are some more good ones

[charaznablescanontoyota]

words of wisdom from wikipedia this evening

[ryannorth]

much to consider

[lilu-the-horse]

when horses do the big doggie stretch and go allll the way down…

Yeag

[chestnut-horse]

can I add to this?

[lilu-the-horse]

absolutely you can

[horsefigureoftheday]

If I may add

And let's not forget about

[kaijuno]

[byteofsoup]

Imagine you're so small and cold and scared but there's smaller ones that are smaller and colder and more scared. I'm going to cry

[the-final-sif]

'Most Responsible Kitten In The World' Found Watching Over Orphaned Litter

A fluffy black kitten named Binx was found attempting to care for three younger kittens "as best he could."

Binx did his job well and all 4 of them got fostered together!

[heedra]

In elementary school, my best friend and I had this game we would play where we were school supplies living inside a child's desk and going on slice-of-life adventures inside it. And I remember that a key component of our school supply society was a sort of religious schism that existed around the purpose and nature of the giant hand that occasionally reached in to grab different citizens, use them, and then return them, because most school supplies considered this an auspicious and enviable moment of being selected for a greater purpose and allowed a glimpse of a vast truth, but pencils considered it a horrible portent of doom because they always got sharpened during it and came back smaller and closer to death. We were third graders btw.

[vanglussy]

Can't believe people are out here getting their asses beat by literal children in compelling worldbuilding contests

[03josten]

stop fucking using the word psychotic to describe bad behaviour and violence already god fucking damn it

[03josten]

oh my god i’m so tired psychotic does not mean violent it does not mean angry or erratic. it refers to a person suffering from psychosis, a loss of touch with reality that includes hallucinations and/or delusions. psychotic people are not inherently violent and y'all need to understand how much stigma you create when you again and again incorrectly use the word psychotic without even thinking about it

[03josten]

would appreciate if non-psychotic people could reblog this

[alex-and-nova420]

In psychosis i was just really annoying i never did anything Evil. People with psychotic disorders are just that – people having a tough time

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

Clip of Lucy Dacus on the Las Culturistas podcast.

[meirimerens]

Hello! I have a question 🙋‍♀️ What do you mean by birth canal? Is it related to how caves are often metaphors for wombs in art or something else altogether?

haiii 🙋 so it is one part of the whole thing, caves have been noted as having a womb-like Thing to them not just in art but also um. in general

(those are not painted caves, just normal caves. Well "normal" you know how Nutty Putty is. fun fact second one used to a sanctuary to Artemis, now is used as adjacent to a sanctuary to Mary-Magdelene, and women who want kids bring eggs or little figurines. we on some uterine shit)

but I mostly meant in mythology. okay so in cave art interpretation[grabs your ankle] stay here. this is interesting. so in cave art interpretation we're actually kind of stumped and we've been stumped for decades. the interpretations are many, but none is really truly fully applicable to all, or even to many, and the various interpretations come with seven billion caveats ("hunting magic" interpretation? -> likely not, because painted fauna ≠ hunted fauna *possible exception? southern african rock art, because there still exist hunter-gatherers who are carrying myths and memories associated with the rock art, but pre/proto-historic hunter-gatherers ≠ contemporary ones, but they're a good interpretative source still; "shamanic transe" interpretation? -> likely not, as we do have rock art done in shamanic transes such as in north america and they're very formally different from European cave art, and you likely would not have been able to draw with such attention to proportions etc while zoinked out of your gourd, but "not drawn in a shamanic transe" ≠ "not drawn in a shamanic context, or by a shaman, or within a shamanic society"...)

However☝️ one of the newer interpretations, which takes into account the placement of the figures[I am still holding you firmly not letting you leave], is that european cave art, at least in Some very prominent instances, could have been made in the context of a cosmogonic myth of Cave Of The Origins (cf. Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, who I'm sure I've mentioned before). okay now this is truly a Everything Looks Like A Nail situation. once you're mildly aware of this theory Everything Looks Like A Cave Of The Origins. it is one of the few basic foundational myths of humanities (basically of all the How Did We Get Here myths of all cultures, you have plenty, but they actually all derive from a handful of bases), that all creatures on earth were born of Hole In Ground. Hole In Ground is the primordial Mother of everything. (hence... one could say... the proliferation of Mother-Earth goddesses). as such, cave art in some instances COULD be articulated around the function of describing/transmitting/expressing the myth of Cave Of Origins/Mother Hole-In-Ground. And for context, what made me write the post is this 👇 general disposition of the Lascaux cave

looks fucked doesn't it. it's tears-pulling irl. anyways you're noticing the Passageway + the rocky crop, and that's we're focusing on. if I were to give my own interpretation of it. and it just an interpretation. fed by and built upon what I've already learned and read about both Lascaux and cave art as a whole. If I were to interpret it in a crazy way. and my sibling in Cave I'm insane. this is what I'd do of it.

I won't lie to you when you're in the Bull Room and you have the Passageway in your sights I will not lie to you that shit looking like () with a visible Hole where the rocky outcrop/upside-down/dead horse is I'm not lying. hence I why believe Some Level of Birth Canal symbolism could be true AND real in there. And I am building my case with in mind the interpretations, that scientists made from studying the order in which were painted the animal, that the animals are painted in order and with the attributes of the season of their heat period, meaning lascaux Could be a transcript/expression of a myth/story of the cycles of seasons, and as such life and rebirth.

I'll say it ☝️ I find it less Birth Canaly than Niaux, where the experience is truly like this

Michel Lorblanchet also mentions how the progression of the realism of the figures the closer you get the entrance of Pergouset cave leans to him credibility to the conceptualization of the cave as, if not a mother-type, some kind of "pre-life" state, where the further from the light creatures are the more amorphous, chimeric, "unfinished", etc they are, and become more and more realistic as they come close to the light/outside world, and this shift towards realism is marked by

That's right.

And where are you before you are born? There exactly.

Tldr

Oh my fucking god dude didn't mean to make it this long. but it was such a nice trip we took together isn't it :)

[sacred-portal]

[cargopantsman]

[nojamnojelly]