I Have Loved The Stars Too Fondly

She/her BDG fan in the year 2026?? Loves being either ridiculous or completely earnest :D PFP hummbingbirdthing drawn by Isabella Bennett with extra stuff added by me in Canva

[hummingbirdspark]

It’s been long overdue for me to write an intro for myself!

My name is Sparky, my pronouns are she/her

I love creative writing and music!

My sideblogs are @steambot-sparky for Steam Powered Giraffe and @mechs-whos-more-likely-to for Mechanisms who’s more likely to polls

Feel free to say hi in my ask box! I don’t bite! Not even if you want me to

Please send asks to @steambot-sparky because my askbox for this blog is broken

If you like BOTC, check out my new sideblogs were I'm mad about being the Mezepheles AND the Mutant, AND the Minstrel! @mezepheles-official and @notmutant-official and @minstrel-official

[theoneandonlylobster]

I see people discussing why we shouldn't misuse psychosis or delusion, particularly when it comes to AI, but something I never see mentioned, which really should be among them, is "word salad."

I don't know how often I've heard something described as "AI-generated word salad" in the past couple of years, but did you know! Word salad is an actual schizospec symptom and not something AI can do?

Word salad, which is also known as schizophasia, is a thought disorder seen in mental illnesses like schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar mania, or advanced dementia. It stems from a disruption in the brain's ability to process language and organize thoughts logically. As a result, what the speaker says may follow some grammatical rules, but they are semantically meaningless to the listener. The speaker is usually unaware that they are not making sense to others, but not always (I sometimes know).

In other words: this is a real human thing AI can't do! Just like the phrases "delulu," "narcissistic," "psycho," and others, unless you know what you are saying, please remove this from your vocabulary. Thank you!

[mx-macintosh]

y'all need to relearn the word erratic and stop using schizophrenic/bipolar/psychotic as a replacement

[mx-macintosh]

y'all need to relearn the word particular and stop using ocd as a replacement

[weresoul]

People need to relearn the word "egocentric" and stop using narcissist/narc as a replacement.

[thatpreciousthing]

People need to relearn the word "impulse" and stop using "intrusive thought" as a replacement

[answrs]

People need to relearn the word "lying" and stop using "gaslighting" as a replacement

[oysters-aint-for-me]

i’m obsessed with this

and then, two months later....

🥺

[very-gay-alkyrion]

[coughloop]

Worlds oldest haunted house has passed away at the age of 207

[coughloop]

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of... maybe everything actually

[lady-halibuts-chambers]

[herowyn]

5 0    Y E A R S    A G O

[closetocanada]

Happy Moon Landing Day! ❤️👩‍🚀🌛

[persephoneme]

you can't say "hey has anyone noticed that M/M fic outnumbers F/F like 100:1” or “it feels racist that only 3/202 characters on the ao3 top 100 ships list are Black and two of them are Alastor HazbinHotel” bc some ppl will start going like “oh so you think we should FORCE people to write about things they DON’T CARE ABOUT for WOKE????” and you’ll be like “no, i’m pointing out that the conditions that created this disparity are informed by racism & misogyny” and ppl will say “it’s not BIGOTED to only care about WHITE MEN” and then the gargoyle king appears

[goobra]

my unpopular opinion is that i hate tiktok because now people just publicly watch loud ass videos in public spaces with no regard for anyone else. 100% it was not this bad with youtube, it’s such a different thing with tiktok. put on headphones. you are grown.

Girl……

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

This is it! This is what social media/smart tech have done! They’ve rotted away any distinction between private and public.

Yes, we do have the right to make demands on public behavior. Of course we do. Have you never heard of laws and etiquette? I’m not allowed to grocery shop naked. You can’t rummage through my purse. I can’t have a work meeting in the middle of a movie theatre.

I remember when it was taboo simply to answer your cell phone in public. The person answering would apologize and try to go to a more private area. Then public calls were normalized. Then putting people on speaker. Then listening to music without headphones. Do you know how many times I have hiked up a mountain or driven to the beach, only to be met with someone blaring shitty top 40 music from their portable speaker, because Heaven forbid you go one hour without noise?

Old woman yells at cloud and all that, but I can’t believe someone is not only admitting this behavior, but saying it’s a good thing! No one likes you! You’re a menace!

[elidyce]

BEING INCONSIDERATE OF OTHERS IS STILL BAD.

It was obnoxious when it was youtube.

It was obnoxious when it was music.

It was obnoxious when it was the radio. 

It was obnoxious when it was dudes wanting to talk to you instead of letting you just read your freaking book.

Do you want to be this guy? Because being obnoxious in shared spaces is how you become this guy. 

Wear your damn headphones like an adult participant in the social contract.

[10thingsihateabout-all-yall]

Best art history lesson ever, thank you

[hazeldomain]

[apatheistlesbian]

Anyway this disability pride month I would like to shoutout disabled folks whose creativity has suffered because of their condition. I’m talking people with hand tremors and pain that stop them from drawing, knitting, and playing instruments. People whose thinking has become so disorganized that nothing they write makes sense to other people. People with chronic pain who can no longer dance. People so over medicated in a fruitless attempt to maintain stability that the wells of their imagination have run dry.

I see you and I love you. You are more than your creative output. You are not a shell of what you used to be. You are a whole, complete person, regardless of what your creativity has been, is now, or will be in the future.

[3000s]

[3000s]

help... no you're thinking of breaking bad

[3000s]

Breaking Things

[xpxssxm]

Stranger Bad

[gunsandfireandshit]

[classicslesbianopinions]

it is like. i am deliberately not posting that much about the nolan odyssey because i don't have much genuine interest and i find the whole like outrage theater people do at adaptations to be exhausting and unproductive and often misguided + i don't really care what celebrities are doing. but zendaya's 3000-year-old iranian earrings are like. such an on-the-nose fuck you. like 1. you can practically feel the stylist going "oh, it's old, it must be on-theme!" without really considering that ancient cultures are not interchangeable. but also 2. there's a very clear and important difference between ancient greece and ancient iran, in that there's a reason zendaya isn't wearing ancient greek artifacts on her ears--ancient greece has a cultural cachet that ancient iran does not, by virtue of its position as the perceived origin point of "western" (white) civilization. they are just interchangeable enough that zendaya can wear the artifacts of one civilization to a premiere of a work based on the mythos of another, but just different enough that she can get away with one but not the other.

and of course there's 3. which is that modifying and wearing a cultural artifact of dubious provenance taken from a country the us is actively bombing (and in doing so presumably destroying plenty of historic buildings/artifacts) asserts a certain lack of respect for and/or sense of ownership over that country's people and culture. and obviously this is what makes it seem like such a specifically heinous move.

[perrenlore]

Really important to note when it comes to (3) that the elite (and frankly Orientalising) appropriation of ancient Near Eastern artefacts as jewellery has a long colonial history. Cylinder seals are these little cork-shaped cylinders with pictoral or written designs engraved on them, and work the same way as a signet ring in that you could roll them over wet clay to leave an impression of the engraved relief on the clay to dry. They look like this:

(Cylinder seal of First Dynasty of Ur Queen Puabi, found in her tomb, dated circa 2600 BC, with modern impression. Inscription: 𒅤𒀜 𒎏 - Pu3-abi(AD) Nin - Queen Pu-abi. Nicked straight off Wikipedia as it's a fab comparison of seal / relief.)

In the British Museum you can find "Lady Layard's jewellery". Austin Henry Layard is a guy whose academic efforts I'm admittedly very indebted to. He was passionate about Venetian and Roman glass and did a great job re-popularising both styles in the UK, but more importantly he was the assyriologist who excavated Nineveh and the Library of Ashurbanipal—where we've found the majority of the Gilgamesh tablets. Pioneer figure in terms of Near Eastern archaeology... but check this out:

This is a necklace Layard had made for his wife. It uses real cylinder seals.

To quote the British Museum's entry on the item: One cylinder seal is Akkadian (about 2200 BC) and four belong to the second millennium BC, but eight are late Assyrian (about 1000-612 BC). Late Babylonian and Achaemenid stamp seals (about 600-350 BC) are used for the pendants and clasp.

Enid later wrote in her diary that, when they dined with Queen Victoria in 1873, it was 'much admired'.

Ancient Near Eastern artefacts, repurposed as jewellery in a set that doesn't give a single fuck about accurately dating them, let alone treating them with the sort of respect you might perhaps expect of items over four thousand years old. Instead they've become a mark of elite colonial status, an Oriental curiosity utterly separated from their historical context. They're 'old'. They're non-descriptly 'other'. Time and place dissolve into an attractive and vague exoticism.

All while the place these seals have been appropriated from is busy being exploited by the very empire this "jewellery" is being shown off to!

So to bring it back to your third point: you're absolutely right!!! And this has precedence dating right back to the start of Western study (and plundering) of the Ancient Near East. It's a carelessness, it's an ignorance of historical context, and it's explicitly colonial.

[classicslesbianopinions]

thank you for the added context!

[shaftking]

“Media can be factually made with a child/family audience in mind” and “media for children/family audiences can be well made and engaging pieces of art” and “if you are an adult you should have a more diverse media diet than what exists to target an audience of primary middle and grade schoolers” and “it’s okay to watch a cartoon as an adult and enjoy it” can coexist.

[fakelawyerbug]

I've seen a bunch of "fandom etiquette" posts on my dash today and I'm going to say something that is maybe going to be unpopular but;

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

So much of "fandom etiquette" seems to be about insulating creatives from Feeling Bad and hostility to any kind of negative feedback is a pretty big contributor to why bigotry festers in these spaces.

[iridescentoracle]

#imo the potluck analogy applies- it would be rude to critique someone's icing technique at a potluck bc it wasn't as good as at the bakery #but if they had decorated their cupcakes w hate symbols it wouldn't be rude to tell them that's gross and gtfo #in fact it would be inappropriate to NOT say anything in that situation #or to complain that another guest who did point it out was 'ruining everyone's potluck' #and pointing out racism in fan works is 100% the second thing not the first! (via destructions-daughter)

[nallchange]

FAQ:

Q: *surprised noise?*

A: You've transformed into a creature!

Q: *confused noise?*

A: You could change back, if you want to.

Q: *excited noise?*

A: No, you don't have to. 💚

[zhoudadudugongjin]

Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.

I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.

[zhoudadudugongjin]

me everytime one of my seemingly non-specific homoerotic text posts breaks containment

[inthefallofasparrow]