Lex Legion

Here, there, or elsewhere.

[three--rings]

Because it’s the Glorious 25th, I am of course thinking of Sam Vimes today. 

And the thing about Vimes as a hero is that he’s so extreme in personality, but also so deeply relatable. 

Carrot, for example, (and of course it’s not an accident that Carrot is there as comparison) is your typical fantasy hero.  And he’s not relatable at all.  He’s Good in a way that most people will never be, can never be.  There’s something God-touched about his goodness.  And his goodness isn’t…super effective.  I mean, it is a little.  But no, who is it that really creates and continues the sweeping change of Discworld, over and over again?  It’s Sam Vimes.

Sam Vimes, who spent most of his life drunk and in a gutter.  Who burnt out from his unfair job, unjust world, and unappreciated caring and gave up.  For YEARS AND YEARS he gave up. 

Until he finally met a situation that was so intense it forced him to care again.

And lord, that is so COMFORTING.  That you can fuck up your whole life for a couple decades and then still answer the call when it comes.  Save the day and push for changes.  Be the sand in the gears of industry, fight impossible odds and win over and over, while complaining about having to do it the whole time. 

Vimes as we mostly know him is a character our world desperately needed.  Someone who keeps pushing and pushing against overwhelming injustice, even when it seems like the powers that be are stacked so high against you. 

But also how much more powerful to say “this character was once a total waste of space.”  He was ground down by daily life and constant injustice.  But he didn’t stay that way forever.

And god if that’s not inspirational as fuck. 

[coldalbion]

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

Campaigner has used the idea drawn from Discworld novels to register the disproportionate effect price rises have on the lower paid

""The index, Monroe said, is named in honour of Pratchett’s creation Sam Vimes, who in the Discworld novel Men at Arms lays out the “Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness”.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money,” wrote Pratchett. “Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

The Pratchett estate has authorised the use of the name, tweeting its own Pratchett quote in support of Monroe’s campaign. “Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” wrote the late Discworld author in Men at Arms.

Rhianna Pratchett said: “My father used his anger about inequality, classism, xenophobia and bigotry to help power the moral core of his work. One of his most famous lightning-rods for this was Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch - a cynical, but likable, man who attempts to better himself whilst railing against the injustices around him. Some of which he’s had a hand in perpetrating in the past.

“Vimes’s musing on how expensive it is to be poor via the cost of boots was a razor-sharp evaluation of socio-economic unfairness. And one that’s all too pertinent today, where our most vulnerable so often bear the brunt of austerity measures and are cast adrift from protection and empathy. Whilst we don’t have Vimes any more, we do have Jack and Dad would be proud to see his work used in such a way.”

[helenasurvives]

queer is literally a slur. like you’ve never been called that in a derogatory context like most lgbt people? you think your experiences escaping homophobia make it okay to justify the use of a homophobic slur?

queer is an identity.

it has also been used as a slur. there is no denying that. but using a word as a slur does not make it a slur. because before queer is a slur it is an identity. before it is derogatory it is a label. the use of queer as an identity is infinitely more important than the use of queer as a slur because the people who identify as queer are infinitely more important than the people who use queer as a slur.

say a lot of people decided they hated me. despised me. were disgusted by me to the point where my own name became a slur. would you tell me not to say it? would you tell me i could no longer be helena, and instead must come up with a euphemism for the name that belonged to me decades before it belonged in the mouths of bigots?

because that would make you an enabler.

you would tell me i can’t say my name anymore because some lowlife decided he could use it to insult me?

you would tell a gay man that he can’t be gay anymore because some teens in the early 2000’s started calling everything they didn’t like “gay”, and now he has to say “same sex oriented male identifying individual”?

does that enrage you? because it should. that’s exactly how you sound.

you are telling me i cannot use my label. you are telling me that when my great-uncle shouted until his face was red and he spat tobacco and the word queer at my feet, he was right. he was right to insult me, and i was wrong to say my name.

you are shitting on every single one of our predecessors. you are slandering every person who fought for their rights to exist and and be tolerated and be celebrated in their countries, every person who was lost to the aids epidemic, every person whose country criminalizes love and gender expression, every child whose parents abandoned them for straying from the norm, every person who was born and will die in the closet longing to be themselves. the queer umbrella is a safety net, a security blanket, the comfort of being known without being pressured to tell. it is near and dear and important as fuck to every member of the lgbt+ community and you are a blight upon the earth you walk.

how dare you speak upon my experiences with homophobia. how dare you disguise your own homophobia as activism. and how fucking dare you have the audacity to come to my blog and hide behind an anonymous ask and preach to me about how i’m oppressing myself. go look at the fucking wikipedia page for queer and read about how 1980s lgbt+ activists, especially lgbt+ people of color, fought to call themselves queer in a world that still hates peculiar things. and here you are forty years later spitting queer back at their feet.

i don’t give a fuck if people start using my name as a slur. my name is still helena. i will not change it. i chose it, i like it, and it belongs to me. it does not belong to bigots no matter how badly they want it. your discomfort with my identity is not my fucking problem.

i am helena. i am queer. die mad & go fuck yourself

[helenasurvives]

it’s pride month babes reblog if you’re queer or if you like frogs

[remy-labelle-purple]

Next anon is going to tell fat people they aren't allowed to call themselves fat don't you know it's a slur that thin people use against fat people.

[solitarelee]

genuinely as a fat queer person this is a good example. do you know how many times fat ppl are told by thin ppl they can’t/shouldn’t call themselves fat, like, oh, no, you’re PLUS SIZED you’re CUDDLY you’re FLUFFY, like, fam, it’s fat. I’m fat. It’s not my body’s fault that you decided a perfectly normal word was an insult. Frankly the way queer ppl and fat ppl have mobilized around their words can be compared as well, as well as the way ppl try to disarm them by giving them more “harmless” or “pleasant” epithets. 

[creedencebuegwaterrevival-deact]

[coughloop]

@staff @support

[lexlegion]

[butterflikisses]

[astargatelover]

For those who have trouble reading that:

Imagine being a black, gay drag queen in the 1800s after being born into enslavement AND having the style and cachè to throw soirées that the girls had to come to! That’s why I don’t want to hear this “we’re not our ancestors stuff.” You’re right!

From The Very Black Project Page- William Dorsey Swann was a gay liberation activist. Born into slavery in 1858, he was the first person in the United States to lead a queer resistance group and the first known person to self-identify as a “queen of drag”. Imagine the queenery of this icon.

He was a slave in Hancock, Maryland and was freed by Union soldiers after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. During the 1880s and 1890s, he organized a series of balls in Washington, D.C. He called himself the “queen of drag”. Most of the attendees his gatherings were men who were former slaves, and were gathering to dance in their satin and silk dresses. William was arrested in police raids numerous times,including in the first documented case of arrests for female impersonation in the United States, on April 12, 1888. In 1896, he was falsely convicted and sentenced to 10 months in jail for “keeping a disorderly house” (running a brothel). After his sentencing, he requested a pardon from President Grover Cleveland. This request was denied, but but he was the first American on record who pursued legal and political action to defend the LGBTQ community’s right to gather.

He was known to have been close with Pierce Lafayette and Felix Hall, two men who had also both been slaves and who formed the first known male same-sex relationship between enslaved Americans.

When William stopped organizing and participating in drag events, his brother continued to make costumes for the drag community. Two of his brothers had also been active participants in his drag balls.

Imagine how intelligent and ambitious this man had to be to come up with drag balls in the 1800s! Imagine how many terrible concepts he had to unlearn by himself to be a confident gay black man who does drag in the 1800s! Imagine how courageous he had to be to fight for lgbt people as a former slave in America in the 1800s!

William Dorsey Swann is the original queen, the original drag mother, the original activist. Tell his story!

[carnivalsofsilverfish]

I assume these have been posted, but friends, you HAVE to see some more photos from this shoot:

[lesbianfreyja]

the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” is actually not the full phrase it actually is “curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back” so don’t let anyone tell you not to be a curious little baby okay go and be interested in the world uwu

[violet-nomad-deactivated2018120]

See also:

Blood is thicker than water The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

Meaning that relationships formed by choice are stronger than those formed by birth.

[espurr-roba]

Let’s not forget that “Jack of all trades, master of none” ends with “But better than a master of one.”

It means that being equally good/average at everything is much better than being perfect at one thing and sucking at everything else. So don’t worry if you’re not perfect at something you do! Being okay is better!

[theshantiestme11ophone]

These made me feel better

[thelifeofatubaplayer]

Also, “great minds think alike” ends with “but fools rarely differ”

It goes to show that conformity isn’t always a good thing. And that just because more than one person has the same idea, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.

[eattheacid]

what the fuck why haven’t i heard the full version to any of these 

[terror-billie]

“Birds of a feather flock together” ends with “until the cat comes.”

It’s actually a warning about fair-weather friends, not an assessment of how complementary people are.

[engel-tier-deactivated20180213]

I’ve always felt like these were cut down on purpose.

[washington-acp]

I really like these phrases and plan on spreading this knowledge.

[alwayswillgraham]

The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

[its-kks-world]

I want to make designs out of these.

[sunderlorn]

Funny how all the half-finished ones encourage uniformity and upholding the status-quo, while the complete proverbs encourage like…living exciting, eclectic lives driven by choice and personal passion.

[manicpussydreamboi]

i learnt the great minds think alike one years ago from this post and i started saying it and i’m not exaggerating when i say the amount of people i’ve indirectly thought the correct thing who are all amazed at it and some even continue to use it is really cool

[destinedtokillgod]

@hellsite-hall-of-fame if you don’t have this already, then what are you doing?

[diaryofandnwoman]

Link for full article below.

Shawna Dias’s sewing machine is tucked away at her work table behind racks of fur. Hot pink, bright yellow, baby blue, they hang like a fluf

[jgvfhl]

*pretends to be shocked but also maybe this will make people realize that Indigenous People Know What The Hell They’re Doing and Deserve Respect*

[paddysnuffles]

3 other fun/cool facts about the Inuit:

1. They also invented kayaks and dog booties.

Dog booties are actually really important for working sled dogs in winter to protect their paw pads from iceburn and keep ice from getting in between their toes and burning them that way.

2. The traditional Inuit diet is one of the healthiest in the world, and the most balanced for the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 consumption

Most modern diets consume way too much Omega 6 and not enough Omega 3.

3. Inuit is a plural noun. When speaking about a single person the correct word is Inuk (always capitalized)

For example, “This Inuk woman is wearing traditional Inuit tattoos”.

[graaaaceeliz]

And she is wonderful

[historic-old-guard-lover]

Never a bad time to remember that indigenous people are wonderful and deserve to have a good day.

[slowlyshytheorist]

My good people, I give you: Amatonormativity.

[small-strong-bookish-butch]

Transcript (with spaces added for accessibility):

“You and this perfect person, who you’ve never met before, to come out of nowhere, fit into your life perfectly, complete you, and make you whole for the first time in your life, like your mother did for me.”

And even though what he said sounds sweet and whatever, the way it manifested to my seven-year-old self is, “If you are not with someone, you are broken. If you are not with someone, you are incomplete. If you are not with someone, you are not whole.”

And that’s not just something that my dad made me feel, that’s something that we as a society for the last 40 years has made every single child feel. Every Disney prince has a princess, every princess has a prince, and every television show or movie always has a character in it that doesn’t want to be in a relationship. They’re happy with who they are. But guess what, by the end of the series? They were wrong! They were wrong for wanting to be alone, the fucking idiot!

It’s all to do with love. Everyone needs someone. And when you raise children in that world, where everything points towards love, when you’ve raised them for 18 fucking years, when you become an adult for the first time in your late teens and early 20’s, we’re so terrified.

We’re so trying to be an adult that some of us will take the wrong person, the wrong jigsaw, and force them into our jigsaws anyway. I’m going to force this fucking person into our lives because it’s much better to have something than nothing.

Then five years later, you’re stood looking at this jigsaw you don’t recognize, being like, “Ah! There’s a fucking cunt in the middle of this!” And in that moment, you have a very, very difficult question to ask yourself. Do I admit the last five years of my life have been a waste? Do I waste the rest of my life?

My generation has become so obsessed with starting the rest of their lives that they give up the one that they’re currently living. We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. People are more in love with the idea of love than they are with the person they are with. The worst thing you can do with your life is to spend it with the wrong human being.

[three-blogs-in-a-trenchcoat]

I would like to point out that this is a fucking stand up special, and it’s said to have broken off hundreds of relationships. It’s also very funny in addition to being very insightful, it’s Daniel Sloss’s Jigsaw, it’s on Netflix.

[ceies]

“AH There’s a fucking cunt in the middle of this” I’m crying 🤣🤣

[lexlegion]

Daniel Sloss = absolute boss.

[trainstationgoodbye]

Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935) dir. George Cukor

[saint-batrick]

not to be so fucking queer, but [array of helpless noises].

[iusedtobecharming-deactivated20]

Do we have a franz kafka diary entry for july 1st, i want to know what he thinks!!!

[rehearsing]

happy too tired July everyone

[lexlegion]

This.

[unofficial-sean]

[lexlegion]

Top tier.

[not-freyja]

Know your history:

Gay:

Used to mean carefree

Then sexually deviant

Then prostitute

Then slut

Then sodomite

And THEN as we know it today but only as a slur

Reclaimed in the seventies

LGBT:

Invented in the nineties

Has faced constant backlash (from both straight, queer, and LGBT folks from being not inclusive enough or too inclusive)

Every year there are pushes to change to acronym

LGBTQ

LGBTQ+

LGBTQ*

LGBTQIA

Mogai

Alphabet soup

Queer:

Used to mean “other”

Became a slang term for “not straight” in the 1400s

Became a slur in the early 1900s

Reclaimed in the 80s.

Sudden push back from within the queer community to have it seen only as a slur in the 2010s, a push that can be traced back to terf ideology.

Is the only term that includes all non cishet people

Homosexual

A medical diagnosis

Used for decades to make queerness into a mental illness

Used as a slur for the latter half of the 20th century

Rejected by the queer community as an acceptable term for a brief period of time in the early 2000s before coming back into fashion.

Only describes the experience of cis gay men and cis lesbians

Think what you want, believe what you will, but every word we have ever used to describe ourselves is coated in blood.

[sweetpeawriter]

Op ur so brave to assume people on this site can read well enough to get this

[nynaeve-almeara]

I actually talked to an older queer guy who said he was amazed to see how many young people call themselves gay. When he hears it, he just hears a slur…but he also said he was glad that people are able to reclaim it, and he’s happy to see a generation of lgbt+ people comfortable with it.

People on this site could learn from him

[jemariel]

“… every word we have ever used to describe ourselves is coated in blood.”

[outforhealth]

OMG OMG OMG

We ❤️ the dictionary and we extra ❤️ all of our fabulous transgender and non-binary patients and community members! Your pronouns matter! You matter! 🌈❤️

[doctorwhoish]

this is what I like to see shared, rather than M&S and their bloody LGBT sandwich.

1) it’s not shoehorned in for marketing purposes. It’s super on brand (for, you know, a DICTIONARY) 

2) it’s not traditionally ‘marketable’ queerness. Non-binary genders are still considered controversial in the mainstream (as opposed to gay men)

3) It’s not mercilessly capitalist. they’re not trying to sell you anything through queerness (like rainbow-patterned bags or flags or whatever). Obviously I don’t know the profit margins of dictionary.com, but they don’t strike me as a soullessly capitalist organisation lol

[c-is-for-circinate]

Like, is the gist "Real life pedophilia/incest/rape is bad, and stories saying these things are good are bad, but including these topics in a story isn't inherently bad, so the people being like 'hey, maybe Ao3 shouldn't have so much kiddie porn there's an entire category called "Underage"' are just overreacting and making things worse?" Because it feels like you're saying, "your negative reaction to this stuff is valid, but also you're annoying and prudish and bad and really you aren't valid."

So here’s the thing: it really does not sound like you're asking this question because you want my answer, it sounds like you want to be angry with me and have a fight. And fair enough! I'm not terribly interested in a fight, but apparently this is my day to dive into this topic as thoughtfully and honestly as I can be. Maybe I'll say something you haven't already heard from other people before. Maybe not! Only you, anonymous asker, know that.

To begin with, you got part of the gist right. Real life rape (including child abuse/child sexual abuse as well as incest) is bad. Stories about rape, about underage sex, and about incest, are stories.

They're stories. They're pixels on a screen. They're not real. Whether they claim that rape is good, or bad, or sexy, or melodramatic, or life-destroying, or a normal Tuesday afternoon. They're stories.

And having a negative reaction to them is valid. Stories can stir up powerful emotions in people. It is absolutely, 100%, fair and valid and even normal for there to be certain tropes, plot elements, events, and kinds of content that make you upset and that you never want to see in a story you read, ever. You don't have to want to read about sex. You don't have to want to read any of it. That doesn't make you bad.

There are tropes, plot elements, events, and kinds of content that upset me. There are stories I won't read. The same is true of literally everyone else I know. Even though I know the stories aren't real. Even though I know the things happening in them are happening to fictional characters, who do not exist, who I cannot protect and who also cannot be harmed because they're not real. Even then, I can be made sad and scared and upset and hurt by reading those stories. And that is okay and that is valid and I am not bad or wrong for being upset about the story I've read, and neither are you.

But that doesn't mean the story doesn't have value to somebody else. That doesn't mean the story isn't important to somebody else.

What I see most often coming from antis, possibly even including yourself, is an overwhelming desire to protect. They want to keep themselves and others--possibly people they know, possibly hypothetical people they may never meet--safe from being hurt by these stories. And that desire to protect, also, is normal. It's even admirable! The problem, though, the thing that does more harm than good, is when that desire to protect drives people to lash out against things that matter to other people.

There is a difference between actual rape and stories about rape. There is a difference between a story that could theoretically hurt somebody, someday (which is all stories, always), and a story that hurts you personally. And there is a difference between a story that hurts you personally, and a story that is inherently poisonous to everyone who touches it.

We know--absolutely, scientifically, incontrovertibly--that stories about rape do not make people rapists. Yes, even the stories where the rape is there to be sexy. Even stories where the person being raped is a child. Even then. Fiction is not the same thing as normalization; again, there are far smarter people who have written far more extensively on that topic than I, and next time I come across something that goes more into detail on this point I promise I will reblog it. If this really is the thing you're afraid of, I may not be the right person to convince you that this is an unfounded fear, but I know someone out there can elaborate on it.

(Unfounded, which is not the same thing as invalid. My mother's claustrophobia is unfounded; it flares up in many situations where there's no physical threat whatsoever, where she has plenty of space to move and air to breathe. It's still real. It still chokes her. It's still valid, she is not bad or broken to feel that way, and she still can't drive through certain tunnels. The fear is real. But the thing she's afraid of can't physically hurt her, and that is worth knowing in terms of how she deals with it.)

We know, absolutely, scientifically, and incontrovertibly, that stories about rape and many, many, many other things can hurt and even traumatize their readers. Even though the situation you're reacting to is not real and you receive no physical injury, you can still be hurt by it. The key word there, though, is readers. The fact that the horror genre is out there terrifying people who enjoy being terrified for fun does not damage me unless I do something stupid and try listening to the Magnus Archives again and end up tense and miserable and paranoid for the rest of the week. The fact that guacamole is apparently delicious to everybody else in the world does not hurt me unless I do something stupid and order the wrong thing at a restaurant, and end up itchy and miserable with a little trouble breathing for the rest of the night.

The fact that there are, yes, tens of thousands of fics on AO3 in which characters under the age of 18 have sex? It can't hurt you. Those fics do not hurt you by existing. They can only hurt you if you read them. They can only hurt anyone who reads them. That's why there is an 'Underage' tag--and it's worth noting, 'Underage' is a warning, not a category. Nobody wants you to get hurt reading the wrong fic, any more than the sushi chef wants my throat to swell up because I ordered something with avocado. Literally nobody wants that.

The flip side, of course, is that you hating each and every one of those fics individually and as a group doesn't actually hurt me, or anyone else who writes, reads, or enjoys them. By itself. You can hate anything you like, and fic writers can write anything they like, and it all comes out in the end, more or less. Except.

Except that reading fic is always, entirely, 100% opt-in, and online harassment isn't even opt-out. Some antis have a nasty habit of going after writers whose content they don't like; climbing into inboxes and comments sections, calling those writers nasty names, throwing around cruelties and aggression and insults. I know that's not the same thing as simply disliking a genre, or even passively disagreeing with its existence (although disliking a genre and disagreeing with its right to exist are also very different things). I know not all antis do that. I don't know you, anon, but based on the speed and aggressiveness of this response to my last post, I can't help but wonder if you would do that.

And that does hurt people. Just like it might hurt you if someone threw a bunch of content that makes you uncomfortable into your inbox. Including the harasser, actually--because getting into fights with strangers on the internet about things that make you angry, sad, defensive, and upset isn't good for anybody. Including both you and me.

Anyway, after yet another lengthy ramble, let's get the tl;dr response to your ask here: nobody is ever bad or wrong for disliking certain content in their stories, no matter what that content is. You and your emotions are valid. The "overreacting and making things worse" part isn't about what you feel, but what you do with it. Constantly engaging with places where the thing that upsets you will probably show up, even to argue and try to fight it, will make things worse in the sense that now you're spending way more time thinking about this thing that makes you upset and angry, thereby leaving you more upset and angry. Getting together with a bunch of your upset, angry friends to make your feelings everybody else's problem? Makes fandom a more toxic place for everyone else involved.

Don't read stuff that's going to hurt you. Don't make other people read stuff that's going to hurt them. That's the whole thing, really.

[lexlegion]

This is such a brilliant reply. Heck yes 🙌

[charlesoberonn]

Whenever I do worldbuilding I try to keep this image in mind

[sirnekomeowinton]

[flakmaniak]

[r4cs0]

[understuckphanuniverse]

i hate this fucking site so much *clicks reblog*

[spinachandhoney]

Funniest shit I’ve ever seen.

[brightlotusmoon]

Ah, the Mary Suez.

[areawest]

hundreds of years of language evolution and innumerable events had to line up in the exact right order for that pun to make sense.

[steelblaidd]

This.

[lexlegion]

This journey, ending with that pun?

*chef’s kiss*

[117degrees]

if your “bi positivity” needs to include pan exclusion, then it isnt positivity, and youre just a piece of shit. bi positivity doesnt include pan negativity or exclusion and never will

[117degrees]

if you cant make a queer positivity post without shitting on someone else’s identity ur a cunt simple as that shut the fuck up and go away

[117degrees]

also im so sick of yall just ignoring this behavior because whenever someone like me rightfully calls it out we always end up receiving a lot of harassment about how we’re the bad guys for being upset that op is trying to use positivity posts to further divide the community and hurt random people for just...existing. stop letting people get away with this shit.

[lexlegion]

YES 👏YES 👏YES 👏YES

[lexlegion]

So, Loki was good, but wow did they steal a lot from other sources. At one point I had a full Fallout 4 flashback from watching Cappy Miss Minutes amble across the screen. The cartoon even had that 50’s aesthetic.