Sorry we really went from free the nipple, take back the night, slut walks, and ending gender/sex segregation in sports being fucking milquetoast feminism 101 concepts to fucking girl dinner and "I just worry about fairness if we let trans girls play against cis ones" and "it was right of that woman to call the cops on a black man for existing near here in public during the day time because men are all violent monsters" and "radical feminism isn't transphobic we just need to kill all men including trans ones those oppressive traitors" and I will legit never be able to be normal about it. What the FUCK happened. I'd say I wonder what the feminists of my youth would say about this but I'm one and lemme tell ya I want to throw up. Go fucking read bell hooks or do something else useful please because all of this learned helplessness, gender essentialism, and transphobia dressed up as feminism is actively holding us back.
I am open for commissions to help fund my top surgery. So if you would like a drawing in my style while also supporting queer youth, hop over to https://ko-fi.com/emberstone
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Oh hi, it’s been a while. I’m mostly on here these days to read my teenager’s tumblr haha.
but I thought I’d pop by to promote their new ko-fi site to raise money for their top surgery.
so if you would like to commission some art from @dust-of-embers or you would like to buy one of their photos, or just donate to ensuring an awesome young person can get their surgery, check out https://ko-fi.com/emberstone
What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”
Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.
Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.
Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/
Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄
Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year.
“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.
In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.
“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”
“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”
Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.
“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”
Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.
Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.
oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age
it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.
Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians. So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago
These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least
Also in regards to the aboriginal Australian people, we’ve got song lines* that seem to lead past the shore, but recently someone followed the song line under the water and found the actual place! Plz look up for more info, I do not remember the proper details, I may come back later with them tho.
*songlines are aboriginal Australian travel songs that you’d sing and then you’d know when you’re in the right place when you get to the right part of the song. Like a song would take a certain amount of time to sing, and if you walked in the right direction while singing you’d know when to turn left.
*pulls up to the fanfic drive-thru window* uh yeah, i’ll take a fake relationship with a side of mutual pining and thinking the other isn’t interested, thanks
Loving this… can we declare independence now? I wanna reform this stupid government and as long as we are tied to Britain, we can’t actually work on anything (source: Gough Whitlam, google why he was kicked out of being prime minister)
(Context: Australia just had a public holiday for “king” English lizard boy’s birthday…)
The fact that the state of the world is… the state of the world, while some geezer wears a bunch of shiny stuff without doing shit is appalling. Wasting that much money on a figurehead while homelessness EXISTS is ridiculous. And that’s not even touching on everything else going on, that’s just the bottom line; people starve while a guy who does nothing but inhibit progress wastes the fragile construct of money that this society lives and dies on.
But in response to your tags, hon, yes I consider wanting basic standards political. That’s half of the reason for the old feminist slogan, “the personal is the political.” They kept trying to tell us that abortion rights and family violence etc weren’t actually part of the sphere of politics.
if you happen to be 12-25, queer and/or neurodivergent, we would like to know how you might improve the School System!
it is an anonymous survey, but if you feel comfortable, please attach a video of your opinions, although, bear in mind we will be using your video in a larger video to prove to teachers that the system is outdated!!!
Are you aged 12–25? Wish you could tell your teachers how to make schools better for trans, queer, neurodivergent & disabled kids? Now’s you
Neil Gaiman, what are you doing EVERYWHERE?? Yesterday, you were in two knowledge bowl questions- one involved a reading from a passage in Stardust, and the other was "Which novel, written by Neil Gaiman, published in 2001-" (I didn't hear the rest of the question before I was shaking my teammate to hit the buzzer). And then, this morning, your name was one of the answer options to a radio show question about who wrote a Dolly Parton song. Sadly you did not write a Dolly Parton song.
I'm sorry to disillusion people but Neil Gaiman is made up. He's "everywhere" for the same reason mall Santas are everywhere. People dress up as Neil Gaiman and go to bookstores and conventions and run social media accounts to spread joy to all the young adults and queer people. But he's not real. Neil Gaiman is more like a feeling. In Scandinavia he's known as Nail Guaymin and he leaves books in people's shoes every November 10th.
I can't believe there are still people thinking Neil Gaiman is real. Just recently there were articles of him being sighted in Australia. As if such a prolific author would risk get eaten by dropbears. In The Czech Republic he's known as Nýl Gejmen and every November 10th we drink only dark lager instead of normal beer.
In Finland Niilo Hömömies comes to your house on the 10th and hands out the books himself. It can be pretty expensive to hire someone who dresses up as him for your family, but it's a much loved tradition here so we're ready to use a little money to bring joy to the children. It's worth it, most people think.
In Spain, children invite Neil to visit by putting their most precocious prose and drawings into letters, and then he visits them in triplicate as the "three wise Neils" on November 10. (I don't know why, his honorary birthday is just a very busy day for all his impersonators.)
In these parts we travel out to the nearest desert — it isn’t a long journey, everyone knows Australia is only desert and outback, no other kind of environment, only sand and gum trees — with our sacks of Vegemite, butter or nutelex, 100’s & 1000’s, and white bread (anyone who brings any other kind of bread is taken by the dropbears, they can smell the difference).
The elderly make Dune references once we set foot on the sand, zigzagging along while singing Waltzing Matilda. Once the swarms of Aussie’s start converging, choruses of “G’day mate” echo across the flat planes of sand, the kangaroo riders have jumped ahead to circle the massive gum tree as dingos sit guard at each protruding root.
We all pass out Anzac bickies and give offerings of fairy bread to the Gaiman who sits on the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he, kookaburras laugh around him, the sound echoing all the way to Florida, where the Florida man feels an emotion he hasn’t felt in years.
The emus have brought the folks from Burning Seed who tow along wooden statues of the Tucker Dog and Terry Pratchett, once night falls we set them ablaze — this is a sign of great honour — as the younguns use the clap sticks to harmonise with the didgeridoo sounds that play on the wind. We feast on wichery grubs and Vegemite before singing the slower version of Waltzing Matilda as the youngens drift to sleep, for the cockies are gonna wake everyone up at dawn, and only in the dark have the kookaburras calmed down.
One thing I love about Crowley --never stated, but consistently shown-- is that he is, at heart, an engineer.
I have a few different things to say about that. Let's unpack them.
As the Unnamed Angel, we see his designs for the Pillars of Creation are millions of pages long, comprised of cramped text, footnotes, diagrams, schematics etc. It's very...Renaissance polymath, in the way it implies a particular intersection between artist and inventor.
Also: in the naked romanticism with which he views his stars.
We already knew he made stars, but in s2 we learn that he did NOT sculpt them one-at-a-time. He designed a nebula ("a star factory," he says) that will form several thousand young stars and proto-planets, and all --beyond getting the 'factory' running-- without him lifting a finger. We also learn that these young stars and proto-planets stand in contrast to those made by other angels, which are going to come 'pre-aged.'
...I'm reminded of Hastur and Ligur's approach to temptations. Damning one human soul at a time, devoting singular attention to it over the course of years or decades, and how that stands in contrast to Crowley's reliance on, quote, 'knock-on effects.'
Ligur: It's not exactly...craftsmanship.
Crowley: Head office don't seem to mind. They love me down there.
Hm.
I'm also reminded of the M25.
The M25 may not be as grand as a nebula (sentences you only say in GOmens fandom...), but LIKE his nebula it's an intricate, self-sustaining engine that does Crowley's work for him, many times over. Again.
That's some pretty neat characterization --and so is the indication of Crowley's disinterest in victimizing anyone tempting individual people. It takes a considerable amount of planning and effort (and creeping about in wellies), but in accordance with his design the M25 generates a constant stream of low-grade evil on a gigantic scale.
Cumulatively gigantic, that is. Individually? Negligible.
But no other demon understands human nature well enough to parse that one million ticked-off motorists are not, in any meaningful way, actually equivalent to one dictator, or one mass-murderer, or even one little influential regressive. That's the trick of it. Crowley gets Hell's approval (which he NEEDS to survive, and to maintain the degree of freedom he's eked out for himself while surviving), and at the same time ensures that any actual ~Evil influence~ is spread nice and thin.
It's some clever machinery. And he knows it, too:
The Unnamed Angel and Crowley are both proud of their ideas.
(musings on professional pride, Leonardo da Vinci, the crank handle, and 'the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale' under the cut)
In the 1970's Crowley gives a presentation on the M25, projector and all, to a room full of increasingly impatient demons. Maybe the presentation was work-ordered; the 'can I hear a WAHOO?' definitely wasn't.
Before the Beginning, the Unnamed Angel can barely contain his excitement about his nebula. Aziraphale manages a baffled-but-polite, "....That's nice...! :)"
11 years ago, Hastur and Ligur want to 'tell the deeds of the day,' and Crowley smiles to himself because (according to the script-book) he knows he has 'the best one.'
(Naturally, his 'deed' has nothing to do with tempting anybody, and everything to do with setting up a human-powered Rube-Goldberg machine of petty annoyance. Oodles of 'Evil' generated; very little harm done.)
They don't get it, of course. That's also consistent.
Nobody ever knows what the hell he's talking about.
It didn't make it on-screen, but, in both the novel AND the script-book, Crowley was friends with Leonardo da Vinci. The quintessential Renaissance polymath. That's where he got his drawing of the Mona Lisa --they're getting very drunk together, and Crowley picks up the 'most beautiful' of the preliminary sketches. He wants to buy it. Leonardo agrees almost off-the-cuff, very casual, because they're friends, and because he has bigger fish to fry than haggling over a doodle:
He goes, "Now, explain this helicopter thingie again, will you?" Because he's an engineer, too.
(It is 1519 at the latest, in this scene. Why the FUCK would Crowley know about helicopters, and be able to explain them, comprehensively, to Leonardo da Vinci?
...Well. I choose to believe he got bored one day and worked it out. Look, if you know how to build a nebula, you can probably handle aerodynamics. And anyway, I think it's telling that this is his idea of shooting the shit. 'A drunken mind speaks a sober heart,' and all. He probably babbled about Aziraphale enough to make poor Leo sick)
Leonardo da Vinci is the only person Crowley has any keepsakes or mementos of, apart from Aziraphale.
Think about that, though. Aziraphale's bookshop is bursting with letters, paintings, busts, and personalized signatures memorializing all the humans he's known and befriended over 6000 years (indeed: Aziraphale has living human friends up and down Whickber Street. He's part of a community).
Crowley doesn't have any of that. It's just the stone albatross from the Church (for pining), the infamous gay sex statue (for spicy pining), the houseplants (for roleplaying his deepest trauma over and over, as one does), and this one piece of artwork, inscribed, "To my friend Anthony from your friend Leo da V."
To me, at least, that suggests a level of attachment that seems to be rare for Crowley.
...Maybe he liked having someone to talk shop with? Someone who was interested? Someone engaged enough to ask questions when they didn't immediately understand?
...Anyway.
There's also the matter of the crank handle.
This thing:
This is one of the subtler changes from the book. In the book, Crowley knows Satan is coming and, desperate, arms himself with a tire iron. It's the best he can do. He's not Aziraphale; he wasn't made to wield a flaming sword.
The show, IMO, improves on this considerably. Now he, like Aziraphale, gets to face annihilation with what he was made for in his hand. And it's not a weapon, not even an improvised one like the tire iron.
He made stars with it.
[both gifs by @fuckyeahgoodomens]
If you Google 'crank handle,' you'll get variations on this:
Crank handles have been around for centuries. Consisting of a mechanical arm that's connected to a perpendicular rotating shaft, they are designed to convert circular motion into rotary or reciprocating motion.
Which is to say they're one of the 'simple machines,' like a lever or a pulley; the bread and butter of engineering. You'll also get a list of uses for a crank handle, archaic and modern. Among them, cranking up the engine of an old-fashioned car... say, a 1933 Bentley. That's what Crowley has been using his for, lately. But he's had it since he was an angel and he's still, it seems, very capable of it's angelic applications.
I know everyone has already said this, but: I REALLY LIKE that when he needs to channel the heights of his power, he does so not with a weapon but with a tool. Practically with a little handheld metaphor for ingenuity, actually. One from long-lost days when he could make beautiful things.
(And he loved it. Still loves it, I'd say --he incorporated it into the Bentley, didn't he?)
Let Aziraphale rock up to the apocalypse with a weapon: he has his own compelling thematic reasons to do exactly that. Crowley's story is different, and fighting isn't the only way to express defiance. And if you've been condemned as a demon and assumed to be destructive by your very nature, what better way than this?
He made stars. They didn't manage to take that from him.
Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale are fighters, really --they have no intention of fighting in any war. They'll annoy everyone until there's no war to fight in, for a start. But between the two, if one must be, then that one is Aziraphale. Principality of the Earth, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Wielder of the Flaming Sword... all that stuff. Even if he'd prefer not to, it's very clear that Aziraphale can rise to the occasion, if he must.
Crowley was not that kind of angel. He wasn't a Principality. He has no sword.
...And yet.
It's Crowley who protects. He's the one who paces, who stands guard, who circles Aziraphale and glares out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near.
In light of everything else I've said here, I think that's interesting.
Obviously part of it is that Aziraphale enjoys it and, you know, good for him. He's living his best life, no doubt no doubt. But what about Crowley? What's driving that behavior, really?
Have you heard the phrase, 'loved to the point of invention'? Well, what if 'the point of invention' was where you started? What if where you end up involves glaring out at the world, just daring anyone else to come near? What is that, in relation to the bright-eyed thing you used to be?
What do we name the point to which Crowley loves Aziraphale?
...Thinking about how an excitable angel with three million pages of star design he wants to tell you all about...becomes a guard dog. Is all.
I would just like to add that while he's a sort of engineer and always getting his inventions to do things for him, he never actually tempts a human straight on. He always leaves it up to the human to "do evil"
You see it especially in the convent scene where he gives them all real guns and says (something along the lines of) "they can stop anytime they want, they're choosing to shoot"
And again with the phone network thing at the beginning of season 1. All he did was take out the networks, if people got mad and did bad things that was completely up to them, Crowley wasn't the one whispering in their ear.
Pretty much all of crowley's "tempting" is just him putting humans in situations where they have the choice to do good or bad.
And that, reminds me of the whole "you can be truly holy unless you have the opportunity to also me truly wicked" thing that he and Aziraphale talked about.
b) I found the paper they’re citing and it’s actually really sweet and a really cool study to read! not at all too dense
some highlights:
this is VERY sweet
(this paper came about bc they were having trouble identifying participants by ‘traditional’ recruitment methods like posting flyers and contacting LGBT networks/support groups, and also didn’t want to skew the data toward people who would frequent these)
they also tried making profiles on dating sites but…..
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