A Chapter Closed, Long Over Due

Have since moved on..

[mayflyarchived]

It’s Been Interesting, But-

It’s occurred to me that I have had this thing for a long while, too long some might say and boy. It is cluttered. It’s gotten to the point that I honestly cannot make heads or tails of it anymore. So I’ll be shelving this overstuffed chapter of my internet existence and moving on to another blog. When that one is more established I’ll share where it is if anyone wishes to follow me there. In time this will be erased in it’s entirety, but for now it will remain here as an eclectic archive of things that caught my fancy.

So this isn’t goodbye, just a ‘See You Later’.

[findrahil]

okay, with all the anti discourse i’ve been seeing out there recently, i just want to say two things:

1) this is a ship and let ship blog.

proshipper, anti anti, whatever you like to call it. if you do not like a ship, simply skip over the content! block the tag! it is simple: you do not have to interact with content you do not like! no one is harming you by posting or interacting with content you find “Problematic™️” or dislike! no one on the internet owes you anything. it is up to you to curate your dash.

2) the “you must be x to write x” trend is harmful.

it asks people to reveal details about themselves that may be dangerous, painful to go through, or simply uncomfortable. once again, no one on the internet owes you anything. how much, if any, personal information someone puts on the internet is up to them, and it is not up to you to decide whether they have “permission” to write something, whether it be “Problematic™️” or not. up until less than two years ago, i did not think i was part of the queer community, but i was writing queer fanfiction. does this make me “Problematic™️”?

you don’t always know if the person writing x really is x—surprise, people can lie or not share that information—and in any case, it isn’t your business. bad portrayals exist—from within and without the community. we can simply not read them. sending hate mail to or doxxing anyone who doesn’t fit your blueprint of “who’s allowed to write xyz” is dangerous and downright awful. let me also remind you once more that i, and all other fanfic authors out there, owe you nothing. you do not have a right to my personal life.

at the heart of all this is the fact that fiction does not equal reality. sometimes people write unhealthy relationships to process trauma. you have no right to demand that knowledge. sometimes they write them because those dynamics are interesting to explore in a work of fiction that, again, does not equal reality. and again, you have no right to know why they write something. it is not up to the writer to impress morality upon the public. further, whether or not a work is moral has no bearing on its value as art. contrary to what purity culture would have you think, morality is entirely subjective and full of grey zones. you are not the sole arbiter of morality. if you disagree with an author’s work, simply do not interact with it.

“there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. books are well written, or badly written. that is all.”

—oscar wilde, the picture of dorian grey

tl;dr: don’t like, don’t read.

[mayflyarchived]

Just leaving this here as a reminder.

[re11]

Birthday gift for a friend! Lucifer from Obey Me!

[chibird]

It’s important to accept the periods when we’re not OK. 💛 This ghost friend is January’s limited edition pin club pin on Patreon! 3 more days to sign up!

[matty-murderdock]

Remember that time that Marvel Studios whitewashed and genderswapped a prominent Tibetan monk just so that they could market to China since the CCP doesn’t recognize Tibet?

Remember that time that Marvel Studios erased the existence of Steve Rogers’s gay and Jewish childhood friend and instead decided to age up his teen sidekick to replace him?

Remember that time that Marvel Studios decided to make Peter Parker a whitewashed version of Miles Morales instead of either using Miles in the MCU or staying more faithful to Peter Parker’s character?

In the same vein, remember that time that Marvel Studios erased the Parker family’s poverty and talked down about the historical Aunt May for not being a “real” breadwinner unlike their version?

Remember that time that Marvel Studios completely erased Wanda and Pietro Maximoff’s Romani and Jewish heritage and turned them into literal HYDRA agents?

Remember that time Marvel Studios erased Sam Wilson’s canonical superpowers because they weren’t “grounded” enough and yet made every excuse to incorporate the superpowers of other characters that were much more far-fetched?

Remember that time that Marvel erased Clint Barton’s deafness and took nearly a decade to finally release anything that even alluded to him being deaf in the MCU?

Remember that time that Marvel Studios more or less erased the history of one of the founding Avengers and only included her as a minor side character with a brief cameo to distance themselves from something in the comics that never should have happened in the first place?

Because I do.

[theweirdwideweb]

[constructiveanarchy]

WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY

[maingorlblog-deactivated2025052]

My dad told me recently that the most important public health workers are garbage collectors and janitors. So much of our health relies on a clean environment. These people do some of the most important work in society. If we learned in dirty public environments full of garbage, we’d all be sick. I cannot thank these people enough for the valuable work that they do.

[thehollowkidvg]

Shout out to all garbage collectors, janitors and housekeepers!

[magi-gay]

Thanks sanitation workers, we love you folks.

[scifigrl47]

My father had this over his workbench when I was a kid.

[obviousbaitfish]

Remember when the garbagemen in NYC went on strike and within like 3 days NYC was overrun with trash, the rats were LITERALLY swarming the streets, and it was impossible to navigate the sidewalks? I do… I remember.

[thatfanfictionchick]

The end of the year is upon us, and as any good fool would I would like to once again invite everyone to visit the accursed inspirobot website and generate your cursed 2022 vibes.

It’s very fitting 😂

@sarchopathic @keeperofthefour @pon-ee @little-butterfly-writes @autumn-ginkgo-leaves @its-mew @op-peccatori @tomochii-chan @mystikmoonlight @hawaiilivin1999 anyone else!

[sarchopathic]

But I just started LAST WEEK 🤦‍♀️

Uhhhhhhhhhhh idk who to tag so here! @mexicanesecat @elvishdork @reapersbarge @crystal13unny and whoever wants to hop on!

[elvishdorks-archive-deactivated]

I can embrace this yeah.

Tagging @zhongxiao, @biggreenfeet, @gatchagay, @murkyteacup, @theevilpretty1, @shymayfly, @luna-the-moth, @baalism, @twiceasfrustrating​, @eldritchlittleblackdragon​ and anyone else who wants to!  

[mayflyarchived]

Well I am trying to!

Thank you for the tag, @elvishdork!

I tag anyone that wants to do this I guess!

[obeythebutler]

Fluff asks 31 and 32 with Lucifer please ❤

“Don’t forget me.”

“Well it’s a good thing I don’t plan on doing that.”

The thought strikes you near the fireplace.

Lucifer is a demon who is older years beyond your comprehension. He has seen countless empires rise and fall, watched events and participate in some you've only heard about. You wonder, if even after millennia does he remember the faces and all the things and sights humans would observe.

Like that cat who'd wander near the cafe with its scent of coffee, or the man you'd see everyday while on the bus.

All the little things that make us mortals happy, comfortable, a sense of normalcy which you had grown accustomed to in the human world.

You're slowly getting used to new experiences here, like the white and black strand of hair ticking your forehead from above.

"Lucifer," You question, and the demon lets out a hum in response, enjoying the vinyl playing and the warmth of having you in his arms. "Do you remember things?"

The humming stops, and there's a puzzling silence, save for the vinyl and the crackle of the fireplace. You can imagine the demon's expression, of furrowed brows and lips tuned upwards.

"...What kind of a question is that?" He sounds offended, evident by the bafflement in the demon's tone. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course I do."

"No—like faces and things and all that jazz. Like there's a cat that I see near this cafe in the human world and also a place where I'd like to come with you someday, and there's this black car that's always parked near my house, but you catch what I'm saying."

It ends in a question and a statement.

Lucifer rests his chin on your head. "Well, I remember lots of sights and faces, and all major events."

"Even me?"

"You're with me right now."

And the demon's words fall flat at the end as he realizes what you mean. Lucifer breathes in deeply, and you can feel his chest rise and sink from the effort. The tensions that weighs over you both is a heavy one.

You wrung your hands, never having intended to make this evening with him take such a turn. It's utterly perplexing—a demon and a human discussing the effects of the years they've gone through—and the contrast. Your lifespan isn't something to be discussed near the fireplace with your demon leaning on you like a cat, but it had to come up one way or another, didn't it?

Gloved hands come to wrap themselves around you, tucking you closer until your back presses firmly against his chest. Lucifer buries his face in the crevice of your neck, and his breath glides over your skin.

You don't want to be a face forgotten in the crowd.

You pull him closer, placing your arms over his own, and Lucifer presses a kiss to your temple. "Don't forget me," You murmur, with a voice so tiny you're not sure if it's your own.

"Well, it's a good thing I don't plan on doing that."

The demon states, carding his fingers through your hair. "I won't let you go," He whispers, and it reaches your ears.

It's a promise—to himself—to you, that you'll stay by his side as long as time permits, as long as you're willing to stay, as much time as he can squeeze out.

You'll never be forgotten.

"You won't get tired of me?"

"Never ever, MC."

"Even when I go out and cause problems on purpose?" You grin, and the demon has the implication that you're on the verge of causing mischief. "Even when you do, I'll have to come and take care of things, won't I?"

"Will you be softer on me when it comes to punishments? Mammon was hanged from the ceiling upside down and Satan was told to clean his room, and then a new wall had to be built and there was the sixth router you brought home in two weeks."

Lucifer snorts. "Haven't you realised that already?"

"So you're my simp."

"...I'd prefer a better word."

[tepkunset]

Tumblr banning tags like ‘racism’, ‘antisemitism’, ‘transphobia’ and ‘mental illness’ on ios really is a new low huh.

[tepkunset]

@ everyone saying “it’s not Tumblr it’s Apple!” Are you really picturing in your mind a conversation where Apple said “hey Tumblr, make sure you ban the tag ‘queue’ if you want to keep your app on ios”? Are you really picturing that? Because it didn’t happen. This IS Tumblr’s fault for choosing to attempt a shotgun approach at content control and I WILL blame them for shooting more holes in their website than actually hitting anything.

All while making up their stupid “things we care about” end of the year lists, pretending to give a shit about racism, feminism, etc. while banning tags like ‘antiblackness’ and ‘misogyny’.

[sreegs]

alright let's talk about Apple and Tumblr's current predicament. If you don't know already, I used to work at Tumblr as an iOS engineer. Though I keep in touch with current staff at Tumblr (what little that are left that I know) I do not have picture of what's going on internally. The banned word list is absolutely perplexing and I can only theorize why tags like 'long post' are banned from appearing on iOS. What I can do is give you a peek into how the Apple App Store review process works, so you have an idea of the hell that Tumblr staff is dealing with right now.

Let me be clear about this from the get-go: I think Apple's censorship policies are wrong and they have no grounds to be policing adult content within apps on the app store. Apple's power to set content policy over apps is absolutely fueled first and foremost by internal policy that goes back to Steve Jobs. After that, they're beholden to payment processors wanting to distance themselves from porn. Finally, there's lawmakers and policy that influence them as well. I think these are the 3 things that shape their policy decisions, in order.

What happens when you submit an App to the App Store?

You compile an app and submit it to the app store, and it proceeds through an automated and manual process to review your app to ensure it meets Apple's standards. Apple's standards are 1) non-malicious, functioning programs, and 2) programs that adhere to the App Store's review guidelines that cannot be asserted in the same way a program can. These guidelines are judged by a human being assigned to your app during the review process. The review process used to be long, sometimes it would take weeks, but in recent years they've got it down to about 24 hours.

Now, there's a laundry list of things in those guidelines, but we're going to focus on adult content because that's the most relevant. If a reviewer runs your app and finds porn, your app is rejected and you're told to correct the problem.

What's Tumblr dealing with now?

In the case of Tumblr, this would be a reviewer going to search, typing in something like 'tits' and finding porn. Sometimes they would search something more innocuous like 'socks' (yeah, i know) and find porn. Sometimes they would search something completely innocent and find porn anyways. Tumblr would get rejected.

This happened regularly. I'd say once every 5 updates (every time Tumblr updates the iOS app, they have to re-submit the app for review). A reviewer would find porn, and respond by sending us the steps they followed to find it and a screenshot of the content. Tumblr staff would remove the porn, resubmit, the reviewer would find nothing, then approve the app. Once in a while Tumblr would get a really persistent reviewer. It would take a handful of porn scrubs and re-submissions before they'd finally green-light an update.

Sometimes, however, Tumblr would get a reviewer who flags tumblr for porn, and when Tumblr opened the rejection notice, the screenshot would be something completely not porn. I'm talking stuff like a woman in a bikini. Not even posing in a porny way. Something you'd see in like, a laser hair removal ad. In these cases, Tumblr would appeal the rejection, saying the content doesn't violate our policies (and to the best of our knowledge, Apple's) so we won't remove it.

In this case, the appeal gets bumped up to a developer support contact that would manage the appeal. Usually when it got there, the contact would look at the report and say "oh, yeah, that's not porn" and tell us to re-submit the app again. It then would usually be approved.

This process, I believe, is where the problem lies. Of course, the bigger picture is Apple's adult content policies, but the relationship between reviewer, developer support, and policymakers is completely fucking discordant. Since the review process is human, some reviewers interpret the guidelines more strict that others. Since the review process chooses a random reviewer, the review experience is random every time.

The developer support contact is not in direct contact with the reviewer and does not communicate with them in any way, other than the report they receive from the review (that Tumblr has too). The dev support contact also cannot tell Tumblr whether they'll pass review if they were to propose hypothetical changes to Tumblr.

Here's the kicker: your developer support contact will also, like the reviewer, not be consistent from case to case. They stick with you until your appeal is complete, but when you have to open a new case for a subsequent rejection, it's someone new. And every one of them had different answers to the same questions about policies regarding adult content.

I really don't think the people enforcing Apple's app store guidelines have a clear answer on what's porn and what's not, and they're left to decide on a case-by case basis. Apple is fucking massive, and it's a waterfall organization where orders come from the top down. If Tumblr gets rejected because a reviewer decided a woman in a bikini is pornographic, no one in Apple gives a shit. I bet no more than a handful of people in Apple right now are even aware of the situation with Tumblr, and just one person (the dev support contact) is deciding what Tumblr must do to resolve it and stay on the App store.

The 2018 porn ban

I was present for the 2018 app store fiasco and boy, it was mind boggling. The removal was legit since Apple had received a user-submitted report of CSAM, and by policy they immediately yank an app that contains such content. That was 100% understandable, and if I were in Apple's shoes, I too would remove an app that has CSAM in it. But what followed was a gauntlet of rigorous reviews over adult content in general. The app was rejected repeatedly until the infamous adult content ban was fully enacted.

While Tumblr was actively working on the ban, they were asking Apple for any sort of guidance on what would meet approval, because as you know it's impossible to scrub a UGC site of adult content. The answers we got were either vague or unhelpful. Tumblr had to just keep re-submitting over and over with a half-baked porn finding algorithm until it finally looked clean enough for Apple.

During this time, we'd be searching Twitter, Instagram, etc, for the same search terms that we were being rejected for, and finding lots and lots of porn. When the rep was asked if other apps went through the same rigamarole that Tumblr was going through, and why they had porn on their apps, the answers we got were "we can't discuss other apps" (of course) and "that shouldn't happen".

Now, I do not want to get conspiratorial about this because I genuinely don't think Apple has it out for Tumblr. What I do think is it's a combination of the discordant enforcement of policy, caused by the complete separation of policymaker, support, and reviewer. It's also less of a problem for other apps like Twitter, Instagram, etc because they have many, many more staff to deal with the problem. They have more staff to build and maintain porn-removing algorithms, and more staff to put out fires caused by App Store rejections.

A little part of me also wants to be cynical and say that since Instagram and Twitter are so big, they can get away with more than Tumblr can. Combine that with Tumblr's history of blatantly allowing porn up until the end of 2018. I can't prove it, of course, but if Tumblr has a reputation at Apple, it can't be a good one.

Apple's reputation amongst developers

As I mentioned I'm an iOS engineer. I talk to other iOS engineers all the time, not only at my current job but also in other places like Slack instances for iOS development. The iOS engineers at Tumblr did not like Apple's bullshit one bit, which is unsurprising. However, my experience thus far is the vast, vast majority of iOS engineers at other places feel the same way. Apple's review process is seen as an asinine hurdle you must clear. Their policies are not viewed in good light amongst iOS devs, though you'll have a mixed bag of sympathy over being rejected for some of them like the adult content one. It really depends if you've worked on any UGC apps on the app store. If you have, you get it.

Outside of adult content, though, the two other big ones that rub iOS devs the wrong way are the 30% cut Apple gets when devs get paid, and the completely arbitrary policy that Apps submitted to the app store must have a "clear purpose". I haven't talked to a single iOS dev who's been on the side of Apple in the Epic v Apple case over the 30% cut, and most of them are hoping for Apple to loosen up their control over the App Store (either voluntarily or by court order). The "clear purpose" policy means that reviewers can reject the app if they think it's useless, which is incredibly discouraging for new developers who are just trying to get out there with something simple. It also squelches creativity and reduces the field for more single-purpose apps.

Aside from App Store review guidelines, iOS developers also have to deal with ever-shifting technical guidelines that can be unclear, with deadlines that change or are vague as well. A good example of this was a recent change that required all Apps that were available on iPad to support split-screen multitasking. Not only did I get conflicting answers on what that means from Apple themselves and devs who were in contact with other Apple reps. No one knew if their iPad app would be yanked from the store, or if there was a way to opt out. This requirement forced many companies to scramble to update their iPad experience to meet this deadline, only for the requirement to be relaxed, and the deadline to be pushed back. Fun times, great use of dev hours.

The Apple fanboy you can picture when I say "Apple fanboy" is very unlikely to be an iOS developer. They probably just love Apple products and think that the company can do no wrong. The more Apple does to piss off their developers, the worse it's going to get for anyone who just wants to use an iPhone.

Anywho, that's Apple for you. Why am I still an iOS developer? I dunno, I got bills to pay. I think I know what Tumblr is working on to appease them. Don't expect this banned word list to last too long. The timing is awful, of course, since everyone on Apple is on vacation, and Tumblr is too. Have fun with the chaos for now. As always, don't take it out on staff. They're doing what they can.

My asks are open if you have any questions. I'll try to answer them.

[lorilarry]

forgot i had drawn this back in january lol

[mayflyarchived]

This is gorgeous.

[wizard0rb]

silent protagonist meetup

[5ummit]

PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I’ve already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.

[apostaterevolutionary]

Also please note that this appears to only be applicable to THAT SPECIFIC version of the app. If you simply do not update the app, everything seems to still be working as normal (as of December 25th, 2021)

If you’re on apple, DO NOT UPDATE THE APP IF YOU HAVEN’T YET

[guerrillatech]

[dilfosaur]

i realized this was also lost in the fall of the CH website so

since it’s That Time of Year again, i’m just gonna bring back my Every Christmas TV Rom-Com comic

[clarulitas]

[manticoreimaginary]

Watching this (and fearing broken ankles with each loop) I can’t helping thinking about that old quote Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.

[aprilsvigil-deactivated20140416]

But no, if you watch closely you’ll see she doesn’t even step on the last chair. That means she had to trust that fucker to lift her gently to the ground while he was spinning down onto that chair. That takes major guts. I’d be pissing myself and fearing a broken neck if I were in her place. Kudos to her. 

[tiny-detective-agency]

I can’t stop watching this. 

[sassy-hook]

#I watched this for too long to not reblog

[freshprincemomma]

Whoa.

[crossedbeams]

Okay so this is true, but a tiny part of a wider truth. 

Ginger Rogers was a FUCKING BADASS. Ignore for a sec the rampant sexism in Hollywood (they once bleached  her hair blonde in wardrobe without telling her beforehand), the fact that she fought her whole career against typecasting and stereotyping from fellow actors (Katharine Hepburn famously said of the Astaire/Rogers partnership “she gave him sex. He gave her class” ) for starting out in musicals, and went on to have a career lasting over fifty years, winning a Best Actress Oscar (Kitty Foyle, 1940). But… JUST focusing on the Astaire movies…

Not only did she dance “backwards” in high heels, the dances were a task in themselves. Astaire was an absolute perfectionist and choreographed for himself, so as a younger, less experienced dancer Rogers came in at a disadvantage and worked her ass off to match him. 

Then there’s the filming complications… these numbers were filmed in ONE TAKE. So one thing goes wrong and you have to start over. Maybe you make a mistake or maybe your dress flies up because…

Ginger had to contend with her wardrobe. Dancing in heels is the norm at this time, but dancing in a dress designed for cinema cameras… not so much. They were heavy, embellished, uncomfortable, restrictive and cumbersome and essentially a third member of the dance, strapped to the body of one partner.Not only did she have to dance and look good, she had to control the dress too!

Take this routine from Swing Time… (it gets going proper at 1:30ish)

This dress has weights, YES WEIGHTS, sewn in to the hem to make it fly out and create a visual effect. So it’s heavy, it hurts if it hits you, and your partner gets mad if it hits him. So you gotta control it. 

Well it turns out all these factors on this set, this particular day aren’t going so well. So you’re doing take after take, here’s no labour laws, so at 4am after 18 hours you’re still going, even though part of the routine requires you to spin up those curved stairs with no rail at high speed….

Okay so now back to those high heels. In Ginger’s autobiography she vividly remembers this night as the night she bled though her shoes. They did so many takes, her feet blistered, bled, and the white satin high heels she was wearing finished he night pink because they were literally full of blood. And still they keep shooting. She keeps dancing.

The take they use in the film is the last. Early hours. Bloody feet. And she spins, acts and bosses out until that last second. Because she was that professional, talented and bloody minded. This is the last set of spins… 

So I say once again. Ginger Rogers was a badass.

She did everything Fred Astaire did backwards, in high heels, wearing a 20 pound dress, exhausted, injured and standing in a pool of her own blood. And watching her perform, you would never know.

[marzipanandminutiae]

okay yes she was a badass who worked under borderline abusive conditions. but we clearly need to have the “you didn’t do your research about her costumes” conversation again

these are dress weights:

often used by ordinary people to keep skirts from flying up in high wind. and, yes, to give the desired floating effect in some dance costumes

the ones in the Never Gonna Dance dress were apparently about half the size of an old half-dollar coin and made of clear plastic. they would absolutely not have made the dress weigh twenty pounds, especially inasmuch as it’s made of two layers of incredibly light silk georgette

(generally a bad example for talking about restrictive, heavily embellished Old Hollywood dance costumes.)

actually, looking up images of her costumes in general, it seems like most of them were fairly light and easy to move in. which makes sense, because like. the costume designers weren’t stupid. everyone knew she’d have to dance in whatever she was wearing, and studios may have treated actors like crap back then, but they still needed to get a good performance out of her.

that “third person in the dance” idea comes from Ginger Rogers’ recollection of another dress entirely, from Follow the Fleet. that dress was beaded, heavy, difficult to work with, painful when it whacked either dancer on turns- and designed by Rogers herself.

(Again, this was her idea. She seems to have regretted the design after the fact, but no director made her wear it.)

also, when her feet started bleeding during Never Gonna Dance, the choreographer told her to go home and that they could resume filming the next day. she insisted on continuing for several more hours. in some situations she was the victim of appalling treatment, but in this case, she was a freaking Dance Terminator who was GOING to get that perfect take no matter what

I agree with your points about her badassery, but could you please fact-check what you’re saying? I thought to question it because I know how dress weights actually work, but other people would have no reason to doubt the information. and then they’d repeat it, and the chain of urban legends would continue

source 1

source 2

source 3

[dragonladdie]

Hey remember when they found over 200 bodies of native children buried behind a residential school and the world cared for... what, a week?

They've counted about 6,000-7,000 now, for those of you who do still care

[dragonladdie]

It should NOT fall on Indigenous people's shoulders to keep this known still. We’ve been doing that for generations at this point and NO ONE wants to listen to us.

We’re tired, mourning and constantly reopening our trauma and pain to keep people caring about us. It’s terrible.

[foxgirltail]

I should start by noting that I am white, and not Canadian, and that if op wants me to remove this comment for any reason, please let me know.

This is a map of all the residential schools in Canada:

[link to the article it’s attached to, it’s interactable there, so you can get a better look around]

Each dot on this map represents a residential school. Blue dots mean the school is considered completely searched. Yellow dots mean they are either in the process of being searched or there are plans to be searched. Red dots indicate that no search has happened and that no search is currently planned

There were more than 130 residential schools in Canada. This map suggests that only six have been fully searched, and a little more than a dozen partially searched (I counted 15 yellow dots). That leaves at least 109 schools completely untouched.

Let that sink in; if 6,000-7,000 unmarked, indigenous children’s graves were found by searching less than a fifth of all the schools, how many are still undiscovered.

Wikipedia estimates that the body count could be over 50,000, and honestly, that could be a low estimate

[pronouncingitwang]

[ID: A map of Canada with dozens of dots on it, 6 of which are blue and 7 of which are yellow; the rest are red. Later there is a screenshot from wikipedia reading, “Estimates range from 3,200 to over 50,000 children that were killed. Most of the recorded student deaths at residential schools took place before the 1950s. /end ID]