Mystical Enthusiast Void

She/her. Lion/Snake with Bird secondary model and Badger secondary model/performance. Here for randomness and fandoms. Sometimes aspiring writer

[strange-aeons]

Haters and Preps beware!!!

[strange-aeons]

IN ONE WEEK IT WILL BE DASHCON EVE!!!!

[markovchaingang]

hey you. teenage girl writing in her diary. quit talking about the boy you have a crush on and start writing about the current political situation, the valuation of currencies, and the level of technology your people hold. your diary might be the only piece of evidence our society existed after nuclear war fries all of our data backups. future historians don't need to know about damian, they need at least a secondhand accounts of the great water wars and whether or not your leaders truly did worship a deity called "the free hand of the market"

[mothnem]

Keep writing about your crush Teenaged Girl. About your clothes, and how that other girl wore the same dress as you. Paint me a picture of what you were like.

[enchantedlantern]

Historians are going to hear about Damian and they're gonna LIKE IT

[therealbeachfox]

Make those future Historians reverse engineer the socioeconomic hierarchies of the 21st century from dreamy descriptions of Damian's current fashions. It's giving them enrichment.

[vaspider]

Talk about the things you want to talk about. You never know what mysteries your diary might solve in future generations bc you are the only person who talks about something that other people thought was too obvious to talk about, like whatever that third condiment dish that used to be on the table with salt and pepper was for.

[beatrice-otter]

It was mustard. There's actually a decent number of advertisements and household guides and so forth that give details.

[redrikki]

As a professional historian who just spent my morning reading through people's diaries, I'd love to learn about Damian, actually. Tell me all about how much you hate the teachers in X class and what's happening on your social media feed and all that daily life shit. If your writing is going to be the last record of a lost society, let it be real and let it be human.

[jadedanddark]

How to build a garden with no money

It's a relatively modern problem, where you, a scrappy solarpunk with no money, want to begin a vegetable garden. The ground you have to work with is either dead as hell or flat out toxic or has no dirt at all. You want to build a raised bed but you have no money and the kits are expensive. There's a lot of ways to go about this, here's what I did: I built a wicker basket.

Step one: assemble your branches.

You want whippy ones at least 4' long, no thicker than two fingers, no thinner than a chopstick. Longer and bendier is better, but also get a bunch of thick stiff ones. I got mine from the Greenway near my lil condo, and from my neighbor's yards.

Protips: Wear gloves, because thorns. Carry clippers discretely, because people get nervous when they see sharp shiny things in your pocket. The branches in the above pic are one load of three, because that's how much I could carry.

Step two: hammer your stakes

(no pic for this part, sorry)

Take the thickest and straightest of your branches, and cut a length you want to be the height of your box plus a couple inches extra. Hammer them into the ground every 18" or so, and at each corner. Every side of your box must have at least three stakes.

Protip: if the ground is really hard, drive a hole ahead of the stick by hammering in a screwdriver.

Step three: get weaving

First weave your biggest branches in and out between the stakes. You can remove any leaves for free compost at this point.

Protip: this is the hardest part, so don't get discouraged! Here is also where you will find out of the stakes are thick enough or hammered in deep enough. Try not to cry if they fall over. Or break.

Step four: keep weaving

Now you put in the smaller branches. I found that long vine types like ivy and wild rose can be woven in more than one direction, so if you need to fill in some gaps you can get creative.

Protip: tamp down the walls you've made every so often do they stay nice and dense. They need to be closely woven enough to hold dirt later.

Step five: smaller, different weaving

By now you have gotten down to the sticks that aren't quite long enough to go between the stakes. Make them into smaller stakes, ones that don't go into the ground but nonetheless weave vertically through your box walls. Hey, it's starting to look more like a box!

Protip: break off the ends of the stakes and your new vertical weave so they don't have out too much, and WEAR YOUR GLOVES, don't be an idiot like me and think you're safe because you don't have thorns to deal with.

Step six: fill it with dirt.

If you have any budget, use it all here. Get good, organic dirt, get your compost bin empty, and be extra careful taking dirt from elsewhere if you don't know exactly what has been leaking into it.

Protip: get more dirt than you think you need. Dirt is fluffy. The second you get water on it all the air goes away and you have a three inches deep garden box. In the unlikely event that you get more dirt than you need, use it for your houseplants or porch containers.

And that's it! Plant what you like! Use the seeds you've stolen from other gardens and the insides of your daily fruit! If you've bothered your nosy neighbor and they have alerted the HOA or your landlord, take this time to brush up on your various rights. If your neighbor dislikes you because they believe you to be a witch and a lesbian and idk, a long haired hippy or some other deeply outdated derogatory term, get those middle fingers up because you are going to help the bees and they aren't.

Green can be very punk.

[raccoonmilf]

The single grape in my fridge I am trying to be brave enough to eat

[raccoonmilf]

NO! NO THERE WAS A SEED IN IT! WHAT KIND OF FUCK ASS WORLD DO I LIVE IN WHERE MY SEEDLESS GRAPE HAS A SEED IN IT!! I AM NEVER TRUSTING AGAIN!!

[raccoonmilf]

This is my real fridge. The grape was picked from my vine outside and was getting chilled.

[lyraisnotonfire]

favorite thing about tumblr is having a fandom in law. no i haven't watched this show and i'm not planning to. but my moot is having fun!! look how much they love it!!! i'm supportive from the sidelines!

[sustainability-thoughts]

Hey everyone! As part of a personal project I’m trying to brainstorm factors that would make communities/locations more resistant to climate change and the damage that it can cause to people’s lives. If anyone has any thoughts I’d love to hear them!

[sustainability-thoughts]

Just to clarify because there were a couple questions about what I meant I’m thinking along the lines of things that make cities safer from the effects of climate change

[katakulio]

*puts on mortarboard*

Create green spaces, especially ones with trees, to mitigate both heat and flooding, and reduce air pollution as well. They could be parks of varying size, swales, nature strips, wall gardens, rooftop gardens, etc. Increasing tree cover is probably the most beneficial though.

Design urban spaces so that excess water is directed into green spaces, to mitigate flooding and/or make the most of rainwater. Swales, “sunken” gardens, and large green spaces where rivers are likely to overflow are all good ideas.

Urban farming and urban gardening to mitigate disruption of food supply, as well as provide green spaces. Dig for victory!

Diversify food sources as much as possible.

Paint rooftops white to mitigate heat. I have also heard of painting road surfaces white.

Where there must be a hard surface (roads, footpaths, etc.) use a porous surfacing material that allows water to seep through. That could be pavers with small holes or a new type of porous “concrete” (I’ve forgotten what it’s called).

If you can grow mangroves, plant mangroves to mitigate storm surges, as well as improve biodiversity.

Build large offshore wind farms to reduce storm intensity, as well as provide electricity. Yes, really.

Build a modular energy supply to mitigate damage from natural disasters. Avoid large areas being reliant on one energy source or distribution network. Ensure backups for important resources like hospitals, communication, and transportation.

Educate and inform citizens.

Create and strengthen community networks. Community projects, community hubs, and buy nothing/food sharing groups are good places to start.

Anticipate what emergencies are likely to occur and what peoples’ needs will be in that situation. Allocate funding, stockpile resources, and make plans accordingly.

Install early warning systems if necessary, and make sure everyone understands them.

Relocate people or important resources that are unavoidably in harm’s way.

Enforce vaccinations. The last thing anyone wants to deal with in tough times (never mind an emergency) is a pandemic.

Always account for supply lines!

[sustainability-thoughts]

These are all super great! Thank you!

[queererrant]

These are awesome! Here’s a few more ideas:

In flood-prone regions, have government buyouts of flooded houses and turn those areas into green spaces

Change zoning laws where necessary to allow denser population (looking at California) while maintaining green spaces and flood planes

Ensure that city planning takes into account making evacuation routes

In drought-prone regions, subsidize homeowners collecting rainwater

In fire-prone regions, restrict building on the forest margins where fires spread; bury power lines where possible

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s crazy that countries on the edge of the Sahara desert are reversing desertification by just digging half circles

[what-even-is-thiss]

The ground in these places is too compact for water to soak in during wet season which leads to flooding but digging these holes gives the water a place to stop and soak in. And they’re pushing back the desert with this. By just digging holes.

[what-even-is-thiss]

The new plants also help even more water soak into the ground which reduces flooding even more.

These places also give people places to grow food and graze animals like people are turning completely dry compact desert into a refuge for wildlife and plants and solving regional food insecurity just by digging holes.

[untitledgoosegay]

Yacouba Sawadogo - Wikipedia

The half-circles are called zaï! They're a traditional farming practice in the Sahel desert, and their introduction + reintroduction can be largely credited to Yacouba Sawadogo, the man linked above! He reintroduced and innovated on the zaï on his own farm in the 1980s, and did extensive outreach (along with scientist Mathieu Ouédraogo) to encourage other farmers to adopt them as well.

He also promoted the use of cordons pierreux, which are basically just lines of rocks to reduce erosion, preserve sediments, and increase water absorption.

Immensely cool dude. He's been a personal hero since I learned about him.

[just-spacetrash]

in my little pony universe youd go to a job interview and theyd be like so how does your cutiemark reflect your dedication to this position. And every time youd have to spew some bullshit about how your cutiemark of two tennis rackets actually means youre a team player and good at multitasking and view the market like a playing field. or whatever. and you wouldnt even get the job

[fvckw4d]

Thanks to Equestria v Sugar Sprinkle, cutie mark interview questions are considered hiring discrimination, so if anypony asks you any cutiemark related questions or even alludes to any questions about your cutiemark such as "In your own words, describe your life purpose" you can and should refuse to answer. Know your rights, ponies.

[writingwithcolor]

Can a White Author Responsibly Write a Lakota-Inspired Magical Story About Religious Colonization? If so, how?

Mentallyamoth asks:

CW: war, genocide, colonization

Hello, I am currently writing a book in a fantasy world setting centering a Lakota-inspired main character. In this world, the magic that you develop depends on your religious beliefs. A long time ago, two large groups with two different religious beliefs silmutaniously decided that their religion was the right one and that they had to convince everyone of it. They colonized smaller groups, fought each other and killed all those who wouldn’t give up their beliefs. Now fast forward, my main character is part of one of these colonised groups, living in a city full of the colonizers. 

She secretly still believes in her religion, which is Lakota inspired, but knows that openly trying to resist the system will kill her and everyone important to her. So, instead, her goal is to become the first one of the once colonized people to earn respect, power and success for herself and her people. She believes that will be enough to undo the injustice done since she’s been fed with propaganda that the war and genocide “wasn’t so bad”. 

She then finds out that there is still people who resist the system, living in secret and preparing for a war. Yet she doesn’t believe that they can do any change and instead originally plans on ratting them out in order to cast a good light on her and her family. Throughout the story, she slowly learns more about what truly happened to her people and decides that she wants to challenge the system she had always been told was the “right one”. In the end, she helps build a society where people respect each other and each others beliefs.

Now, I am a white author and neither me nor my ancestors have experienced religious colonization. However, the topic of religion and the harm it can do, while still being something beautiful and empowering, is very important to me. Still, I don’t want to profit off of other people’s suffering and know that (religious) colonization is a very sensitive topic.

Would it be possible for me to write this story if I do enough research, and if yes, what are some things I have to pay attention to?

—

Let me begin this reply with the story of a real life person: Jody Wilson-Raybould. She was Canada’s first Indigenous Minister of Justice and Attorney General. She joined politics specifically to change the colonialist Canadian society, as an idealist. 

Jody Wilson-Raybould. Photo by Erich Saide. image description: a dark haired, dark eyed woman with tan skin and a polite toothy smile, wearing a black blazer and red blouse

She was actually starting from a better position to change society than your protagonist—her grandmother persevered to maintain tribal governance, and her father was a hereditary chief. She was taught Indigenous leadership from birth, she grew up navigating the worlds of Indigenous and colonizer, and she wanted to be a lawyer, then prime minister.

It took fourteen years of lawyer positions, tribal counsel positions, and volunteer work for her to gain a seat in politics for the Liberal party. The next year, fifteen years after the start of her career in political positions, she was made the Minister of Justice, the third woman and first Indigenous person to hold the role. She accomplished some things in her tenure. She tried to change Indigenous rights, to make them better, but whether or not she succeeded is highly up for debate. She updated women’s rights and children’s rights. She passed cannabis legalization. She also passed MAiD legalization.

Under her tenure, a white man was acquitted by an all-white jury for murdering a Cree boy on his property in Saskatchewan, and people said she undermined the justice system by openly questioning the jury’s verdict on twitter. She had no power to change a Saskatchewan community with a deeply racist legacy.

Four years after she was made minister of justice, she was demoted to veterans’ affairs—likely because she pushed for reconciliation, and to change the colonial system. She was loud, and bold, and demanding, and she lost power for it. She openly called the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women a farce.

Weeks later, she resigned when there was speculation Justin Trudeau had pressured her to rule one way or another when she was attorney general. She ran as an independent for a bit, but seems to have quit politics since. Burned out, chewed up, writes books about this time in her life and tries other avenues. She’s basically disappeared from Canadian pop culture life, unless you happen to be very interested in this sector of the country’s culture. I don’t know how many Canadians could tell you anything that’s changed for them, unless they directly interacted with her laws—and I don’t know if they even know those changes came from her. 

I tell you this story because here is a real life woman in a significantly better position than your protagonist. She had every single thing going for her, to create something. To change something. To create a middle ground society. And the system ground her down to the point she quit and functionally disappeared.

Indigenous communities are extremely divided on her, some saying she did good, others saying she’s a colonial shill who’s working far too much in the system to ever get land back. Either way, the main relevant thing for you to know is she failed.

The most fantastical part of the story you’re proposing is the fact there is implied success. That there is implied speed. But people like your protagonist exist in the real world. They are lauded and they are slandered. They move the needle slightly, sometimes in good directions, sometimes in bad. But one of the most universal constants in all of them is they fail at producing drastic cultural change. There is too much work to undo colonialism by a single person.

Now, if you read this and think “okay, so I’ll scale back the idealism”, I would invite you to keep reading. Because you’re going to need to fundamentally change multiple parts of this in order to write a respectful story.

1- half of a reclamation character arc

I think this is where the plot falls down the most. Because you jump from “learning everything is a lie” to “and now things are rebuilding and I’m free”, which is how a lot of people think it goes—especially if they haven’t experienced religious colonialism and deconstruction work. 

You basically have the first half of a character arc here, and it’s a perfectly fine first half… until it goes into an altruistic dream instead of really sitting with repercussions.

What I feel like is missing is simple: what is she grieving?

The grief of growing up in a colonial system is staggering. Not just your life, but your parents’ lives, your community’s lives, the pieces of broken chain and disconnect you can see. 

One of my steadfast beliefs is that people need a culture that connects them to something. They have traditions, they have food, they make things, they steward things. They feel ownership over taking care of their families, their property, their community, their everything. 

To me, the root of colonialism is it strips you of that and replaces it with itself, leaving your world a hollowed out shell either fighting to get something, or numbing to stop the pain. It’s traumatic. It is nothing short of traumatic, and that trauma lives in your bloodline as pain. Abuse, addiction, and a disconnect from emotions because you don’t have anything to teach you how to process the world around you, anymore, with these external systems.

This has created breaks in chains that had survived for ages before, and the amount of chain you retain depends on where you landed after it was cut. Someone who lives on a reservation on ancestral land, who returned to the reservation after residential schools, and who has done reconstruction work and knows the language and rituals and crafts and food stewardship and survival strategies has a lot of chain. Someone like me, whose great grandfather left everything to try and become white, hardly has anything. I need to manually go and learn everything from scratch. A bunch of people are in the middle, for varying reasons with varying bits and pieces of what used to be.

The arc right now is the arc I see mirrored in dozens and dozens of asks: I have learned about injustice, and I will gain power to “fix” it. I will be Good. I will Inspire. Things Will Be Better.

Where is the healing? Where is the grief? Where is the time spent unpacking everything and learning to not be bowled over every time you’re reminded of something that was awful because people decided you were sub-human, all because of an idea and a god that told them it was okay to kill everything you loved?

When looking at this character and plot, there’s no real… understanding, on a narrative level, that this colonial system replaced something. It’s treating her secretly practicing magic as enough, when it’s not. She lost so much more than just magic, and she’s only managed to retain the smallest part of her ancestral way of life.

She’s also kinda recreating colonialism by trying to make a new, better thing to replace the present with, instead of reaching back to the broken chain and seeing what parts of it can be pulled into the future. She’s not doing anything to make space for other colonized groups to do the same, as well. It just… ends. With an unrealistic ideal, and a neat little bow that it’s simply realization of lies and injustice that’s enough to get your life back. It’s not.

We can’t go back to the “old ways”, no—the chain is cut, the land has been depleted by extractive processes, the people are traumatized. We do need a new system. But in the end, it’s just as colonial to go full replacement all over again. We need a set of systems informed by the past, before the chains were cut, that lets those colonized become whole again in a way that fits each and every one of them.

What parts of the chain does she hold, beyond magic? What does she want to grab that belonged to her that was stolen generations ago? How will she make space for that? What is fundamentally incompatible with the way the system is now, and what trade-offs will she make to get what she wants? Will what she wants change as she discovers there was an old way, or will she give up connecting fully to her history in the name of trying to move the needle?

I will caution you, however, this sort of story is getting extremely, extremely close to an identity story, and reclamation narratives are fraught in the best of times. I would not make your MC bipoc in this scenario at all, but instead an accomplice to help get the story out and move the needle. I’m simply explaining this in detail for you to understand why this narrative does not land.

2- you’re using a closed practice

Having a magic system implies that it will be used within the story, and will be a plot point. Either way, I’d assume her magic would be described, somehow, and your end goal would be to have it shown in its full Indigenous glory.

This is not going to be possible.

Keep reading

[raccoonmilf]

Actually I’m incredibly upset about how tween fashion has essentially vanished from the market. I think that the tween period is wildly important for childhood development and developing personal sense of style. Like??? I was slathering myself in green body glitter every day and wearing purple eye liner. That shit is highkey important

[6qubed]

that was your joker arc

[raccoonmilf]

No

[loveridden1999]

[teaboot]

Not to stick my dick in the wasp nest here but I just walked past a white dude with the longest crustiest dreadlocks I have ever seen in my LIFE and if I do not exclaim my bafflement and horror *sonewhere* then I'm afraid I will lose control of myself and gently ask him Why

[teaboot]

Like we've GONE OVER cultural appropriation for fucking decades now, that shouldn't be news to anyone, and anyone capable of a google search should be able to grasp that the "vikings" didn't ACTUALLY DO THAT

But even if you boil away the "I don't believe appropriation is a real thing" people and the "well hmm you weren't THERE" people and even the "it's not that deep and it looks cool" people, there should still be the irrefutable fact that STRAIGHT HAIR DOESN'T LOCK?

Boy out here has KNOTTED MATS that are nearly transparent blond at the roots and fucking BROWN the other 70%

Son that's DIRT

What the FUCK

[raccoonmilf]

When we lived in Denver, my friend @kittycattyy420 and I would roll down the window and start chanting “WHITE DREADS WHITE DREADS WHITE DREADS” whenever we drove past somebody like this. It was always so upsetting to see, because it was YUCKY. We unfortunately, could not help but exclaim our bafflement.

[theycallmebrick]

*tsk* Gotta hate it when you chip a nail.

[sandmandaddy69]

[queerliblib]

it’s a beautiful day to check out a book from the library

[meeliesaysno]

its a beautiful day to return a book to the library unread after it auto renews 3 times

[ksfoxwald]

The library says thank you for boosting our circulation stats and the book will still be here later if you want it another time <3

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

question! if a workplace is violating labor laws (which they often are) is there anything that prevents an employee from:

printing out copies of the laws being violated, maybe with helpful highlights/summaries

(and a helpful reporting hotline, if possible)

taping these signs anonymously in the employee bathroom stalls

i know retaliation is something many workers worry about, but bathrooms at least still don't have security cameras. so is this a practical and anonymous thing to do? and if so, why isn't it more common?

[knitmeapony]

They can't have cameras inside the bathrooms, but they can have them pointing to the entrance of the bathrooms. They can figure out who put them up based on what time people went in and out. It would probably work the first couple of times, but retaliation would catch up pretty quick.

[stevishabitat]

Tips if you do want to try something like this:

Don't create it/print it at work or use company paper/tape - there's a time to steal and there's a time to be sneaky. This is sneaky time.

Hide the paper & tape before you arrive (purse, pocket, etc)

Do it during busy bathroom times - start of the day / during breaks when lots of people are coming and going

Be quick and silent

Don't say anything to anyone about what you're up to

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

paper is easy to hide wrapped around the thigh/torso areas. which is a weird sentence to type but yeah.

print shops (and LIBRARIES!) exist and can be quite cheap

you can do one stall at a time (which helps the aforementioned security camera thing)

[free-and-to-none-accountable]

#I spent the better part of a year sneaking literature into the magazine rack in the break room (with favorable circumstances)#it can be done. be safe be smart#every drop helps fill the bucket

[morally-earl-gray]

mfs be like "are you single or taken" and like technically im single but that implies that im availible, which i most definitely am not so yes im taken. im taken by me. you cant have me.