Been fandoming since been fandoming. Queer/married/wiccan/not dead yet. I am the same person who used to be littlewhitemouse.
18+ please, and just know from the outset I don't really tag consistently. This tumblog is a low-effort no-stress free time thing, not something I'm painstakingly curating.
AO3: link Personal site: link
Hi! I hope you are well! I know we really haven't interacted at all, but when someone goes from near daily reblogs to suddenly nothing for months I worry. I hope this is the good kind of not on Tumblr lately and you are happily busy with good things.
Hey! Thank you for asking, I'm doing alright. I found myself having a lot less fun with tumblr and decided to take a break for a while. Get myself out of checking daily. Then after I took a long enough break I just didn't want to go back on. I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of writing about original stories and characters, and I've been pretty plugged into community work IRL.
I tend to drift in and out of online spaces; I may come back to tumblr or I may not. I never really know. I would tell you where else I'm hanging online right now but I'm really not!
I didn't think the little break would turn out to be a long break so I didn't post anything; sorry for worrying y'all. Fare thee well to everyone :) And thank you for your kindness and concern.
Zooms into my 2025 painting of the Otway Basin, Australia, during the late Albian. It was the second of two artworks I created for Vera Korasidis and Barbara Wagstaff, at The University of Melbourne. It took weeks to create; for the paper "Cool-temperate riparian floras in the Early Cretaceous rift valley of Victoria, Australia."
The funny thing is that it wasn't even an intentional stance taking. They just forgot to code a check to make sure characters genders "matched", resulting in that characters could get into relationships regardless of gender.
What the hell are you talking about? They didn't forget anything. A programmer for the sims 1 was a gay man who programmed gay relationships into the game and they kept adding it back, intentionally, in each game.
Actually, you’re both correct. It was an accident and a deliberate decision by one gay developer:
“During The Sims’s protracted development, the team had debated whether to permit same-sex relationships in the game. If this digital petri dish was to accurately model all aspects of human life, from work to play and love, it was natural that it would facilitate gay relationships. But there was also fear about how such a feature might adversely affect the game. “No other game had facilitated same-sex relationships before—at least, to this extent—and some people figured that maybe we weren’t the ideal ones to be first, as this was a game that E.A. really didn’t want to begin with,” Barret told me. “It felt to me like a fear thing.” After going back and forth for several months, the team finally decided to leave same-sex relationships out of the game code.
When Barrett joined the company, in October, 1998, he was unaware of the decision. A fortnight into his new job, he found himself with nothing to do when his supervisor, the game’s lead programmer, Jamie Doornbos, took a short vacation. Jim Mackraz, Barrett’s boss, needed a task to occupy his new employee, and he handed Barrett a document that outlined how social interactions in the game would work; the underlying rules for the game’s A.I. that would dictate how the characters would dynamically interact with one another. “He didn’t think I could handle it with Jamie off on vacation, but he figured that at least I’d be out of his hair,” Barrett told me. “Neither he nor I realized that he’d given me an old design document to work from.”
That design document predated the decision to exclude gay relationships in the game. Its pages described a web of social interactions, in which every kind of romantic relationship was permitted. That week, Barrett confounded the expectations of his disbelieving boss. He successfully wrote the basic code for social interactions, including same-sex relationships. “In hindsight, I probably should have questioned the design,” Barrett, who is gay, said. “But the design felt right, so I just implemented it. Later, Will Wright stopped by my desk,” Barrett said. “He told me that liked the social interactions, and that he was glad to see that same-sex support was back in the game.” Nobody on the team questioned Barrett’s work. “They just pretty much ignored it,” he said. “After a while, everyone was just used to the design being there. It was widely expected that E.A. would just kill it, anyway.”
In early 1999, before E.A. had a chance to kill the design, Barrett was asked to create a demo of the game to be shown at E3. The demo would consist of three scenes from the game. These were to be so-called on-rails scenes—not a true, live simulation but one that was preplanned, and which would shake out the same way each time it was played, in order to show the game in its best light. One of the scenes was a wedding between two Sims characters. “I had run out of time before E3, and there were so many Sims attending the wedding that I didn’t have time to put them all on rails,” Barrett said.
On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press.”
- from The Kiss That Changed Video Games by Simon Parker
💔 An Urgent Call: Stand With Us in Solidarity 🌿🍉🇵🇸
✅️Vetted by @gazavetters , their number verified on the list is ( #332 )✅️
Appeal: In the Shadow of a Merciless War
My only son obtained a medical degree. My only son was supposed to become a doctor.
I appeal to compassionate and kind-hearted people everywhere. Today, we are experiencing indescribable suffering in the midst of a devastating war that has affected every aspect of life. Our bodies are exhausted, diseases are worsening day by day, and we are no longer able to secure even the most basic necessities of life, such as food.
This is the painful story of a mother and her only son, whom she worked so hard to raise to become a doctor. He lives in danger. We live moment by moment under the weight of fear, hunger, and extreme deprivation. Malnutrition is worsening day by day, and we do not have enough food to save my only son. His father abandoned me, and he and I are living a difficult life due to hunger.
I launched this appeal on GoFundMe, but it has received only limited support. All we can do now is knock on the doors of compassion in your hearts. Every donation—even a small one—can save a life, feed a hungry person, and give us a glimmer of hope for a better day.
Urgent: I have to pay rent for the land where I pitched the tent that houses me and my son. The landlord is now asking me to pay the overdue rent, which is $200 a month. He wants to evict us tomorrow because I can't pay.
Please support us and don't leave us to face this uncertain fate alone. We are on the verge of losing even this simple shelter.
Please don't leave us alone in this darkness.
Your donations make a real difference and save lives.
✊ Show your humanity and support us in this difficult time.
May God reward you with all goodness, make your support a source of strength, and bless you and your families.
The story of a mother and her only son: Will we survive or not?
If you can't help, please pass it on to someone who can. Thank you all. I wish you a good life.
Here's my 2024 Mistaken Point Ediacaran landscape reconstruction, created with Dr Duncan McIlroy and his team at Memorial University, Newfoundland. Featured are Beothukis, Fractofusus, Arborea, Charnia, Charniodiscus, Ivesheadiomorph, Primocandelabrum, Bradgatia, Thectardis, Lydonia, sea anemone , and microbial mats.
In my personal experience (which is, granted, not universal) I have never been an actor in a play that 100% went as it was supposed to the whole time. There is always an actor who skips a line, or forgets stage directions, or took a bit too long to change costumes and is now late for their appearances. But the thing about theater is that it's a live performance- you can't just apologize and redo the scene. You have to carry the characters through the important plot beats even if you have to ad-lib to do so. Do you get what I'm saying? A character in a play is not a fixed thing. A book will not change lines between readings. A movie will not change shots between rewatchs. But in theater, a character may act differently, speak differently, but they have to reach the same ending regardless. Characters in a play are trapped, not because things are already written- they do have some leeway- but because everything will conspire to drag them back on their predestined road. Do you understand? Do you understand what I'm saying?
Writing question. Is there a term for specifically an item that can perform miracles / has performed miracles? The word my brain spat out was 'reliquary' but that's not right. Those house saint bits. I want a term for an item that itself is imbued with miraculous ability. And I'm going for religious connotation, not magical. Is there a word in real life or am I just identifying a place where a word should be.
i love that the past years of beggars at the feast line changes have created a narrative starting with 'thenardier is homophobic' to 'thenardier has given it some thought, realised some things about himself and is now bicurious' to the current 'thenardier has finally given gay sex a go'. and the thing is that literally nobody asked for this to happen
speaking of things that literally nobody asked for... i do think the best way to experience this journey is to hear it for yourself. so, presenting, the evolution of bisexual icon thenardier:
1. the classic
as a reminder, here is the line as it originally stood. this is from the live recording of the all-star staged concert, where it was still in place:
transcript: here comes a prince / there goes a jew / this one's a queer / but what can you do?
2. the quiche
enter the staged concert of 2021. there had clearly been a behind-the-scenes conversation that went along the lines of 'this line is problematic, we must update it for a modern audience'. and this was the baffling result:
I am not REMOTELY done with this post. I showed it to my husband (huge les mis fan) and his first comment was 'Wait, Thenardier never said anything homophobic. I would have noticed."
"This one's a queer/but what can you do," I said, scrolling.
"Oh," he said. Then, "I never thought of that as homophobic."
After a pause, I slowly lowered my phone. "Me either," I said.
We talked about this for like an hour.
Thing one. It is the EIGHTIES (when Les Mis the Musical is being translated into english). Homophobia is the norm in the dominant culture. It's presumed people find queers disgusting. "He's queer, what can you do?" would be radical acceptance. That's something an unbelievably cool person would say about their gay friend. The chapter leader of the local PFLAG would talk like this. (It also reminds me of the gay jokes and characters in Fosse's musicals, like Chicago and (y'know) Cabaret, which were also silly and slightly-disparaging (which was how we did it at the time) and yet meant as in-jokes, written by someone who worked with a lot of queers and knew them.)
Thing two. Thenardier is a villain. He's not the antagonist, but he is a villain. If we even read his line as homophobic, that means a villain is the only person to say something homophobic in the play. Cool!
(My guess however is that (thing three) Thenardier being willing to call someone gay just like that is supposed to be him being rude (and punching down to boost his own social status see point five below), calling out something that would usually be ignored. Not because I think this would be the 1800s french context of the original novel but because I can conceivably see that being the thought process of the dude writing these lyrics in the 80s, which is complicated by the fact that 'queer' is a pretty direct language of a slang term in the original french so it does exist in both versions and to some degree the English-language translator was translating the material they had. In that 80s brain, a gutter-dweller like Thenardier WOULD knew a queer by sight (as they also are relegated to the margins) and also is rude enough to point it out instead of don't asking and don't telling.)
But thing. Four? This the the theatre. I remember seeing les mis on stage NOT long ago. 2018? In English but before any of this. Everyone laughed at this line. My gay husband laughed. My gay self laughed. Because the theatre, infamously, is full of gay queers. We were absolutely aware we were seeing a queer or ally actor playing up a funny little line where he points out someone who is almost definitely the gayest extra in the cast for a little private laugh. The extra being pointed out did an offended little huff. I never felt insulted for a second.
"I didn't even remember that line," my husband admitted.
"I do," I told him. "It was funny. A silly little line. I didn't feel like I was being laughed at. I felt in on the joke."
'What can you do?' Thing five: Thenardier is SCUM, on top of being a villain. He robs corpses. He abuses kids. He's a landlord. He has seen the very trash compactor of the earth and he is aware that some dude being queer is fucking small potatoes. He treats this random queer extra like he's no big deal because frankly Thenardier is RANCID GARBAGE and the nicely-dressed extra playing a gay wedding-goer is so obviously, clearly presented as his superior on stage that the message is kind of undeniable if you have eyes. "I, the trash bastard of this play," says M. Thenardier, "feel superior to this well-dressed, presentable homosexual, and you, the audience, are supposed to be immediately aware that this is silly, and I am the trash asshole here, and this well-dressed homosexual is obviously my social superior despite my delusions of grandeur."
Thing six: And the antisemitism. There's an antisemitism here too. I don't have extra words about the antisemitism here at the moment but it is here.
In conclusion. Here we have accomplished taking a line said by a villain to indicate how delusional he is about his social status, or maybe an honestly harmless acting in-joke, or maybe just the most cool take on someone being gay possible in the 80s and through great effort we have once again managed to imply that only one character in this Thing is queer and it is of course the grossest dude inside EXCELLENT work. This is not a problem per se (IT IS VERY FUNNY) but an excellent and interesting failure point that keeps happening where we try to 'update' an old story and by sanding down and blunting and watering down the gross parts and make a much more confused and kind of worse message
Please don't worry about all that message shit though it's VERY funny.
@sonnetscrewdriver I have no idea how I even produced that sound in the first place, every single time I’ve tried to replicate it since it’s just come out as a sad wet fart noise
