Clouds Of Smoke At The End Of The World

Hi. She/her/hers, 1989

[yviisxo]

rest in peace to this diva

[teatimewithgiles]

Rest in Peace, Tony.

I'll always remember your smile.

Anthony Head (1954-2026)

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Visiting family for the weekend, including my seven year old niece, who is obviously the most special and incredible child on the planet

Anyway, she really, really loves it when I tell her stories. She loves stories anyway, and at first this manifested as "stories about Tad-Cu Bryn", aka my father (her grandfather) who died before she was born. This has been a lovely way to keep his memory alive, and she adores every story - she has her favourites, which she will request.

Then it became apparent that she specifically loves me telling her stories. She'll happily ask others for them too, but from me she just wants any anecdote at all; which of course is wonderful and demonstrates that she is a child of impeccable taste and wisdom and brilliance, but also she has ADHD and the energy reserves of a seven year old and so this gets Tiring very quickly

Yesterday, in the car on the way back from the wildlife centre, she asked for one of my longer stories, and I was like hey, how about we try something different?

And she was like, no, tell me a story about Tad-Cu Bryn

And I was like, this will be a brand new story and you get to play it and help me tell it

And she was like, explain

So I gave her three characters to choose from. The first was a warrior with a sword she could name, who was nonetheless dyspraxic. The second was a gymnastic elf who could commune with trees but was afraid of heights. The third was a dyslexic witch whose spells sometimes go wrong when she spells the words wrong.

She picked the witch. I pulled up an online d20 on my phone. I went to start, and she insisted my mother had to play as the elf.

So I told them that the new queen of the kingdom had called for them, because their palace treasury had been robbed - specifically, a single enchanted coin that brings luck and wealth to a ruler's reign had been stolen. And tales of enchanted coins were suddenly emanating from across the land, so each one needed investigating until the right coin was found.

It turns out kids who like stories will absolutely lap this shit up. She was enthralled. It was the simplest story - they had to get into a bank, revive some unconscious gnomes, then enter the vault, find the coin that had been deposited into it, then get back to the queen. Enough to fill a half hour car ride, basically, but she managed to fill it with all the wacky hijinks you get from a ttrpg, particularly when she tried to smash a door down with a hammer but rolled a 1.

We finished with the queen saying it wasn't the right coin, and then my niece demanded we go again, this time with her playing as a sapient reticulated python. That time we made it all the way to the final boss fight, which was a sorcerer who created a big coin monster out of loads of coins; I asked my niece what she wanted to do, and she described graphically how she wanted to constrict and eat the sorcerer and immediately rolled a 19. So, sure! Okay. The sorcerer is now very dead. The coin monster, though, was still there, and as my niece tried to say she would do the same thing, I was like, no, you're a snake and you just ate. You're now immobile.

At this point, my sister advised her to regurgitate the sorcerer.

Great! said my niece. I'm going to do it at the coin monster.

And rolled a 20.

So she projectile vomited a dead sorcerer into the coin monster, and won the day.

Anyway, today she immediately demanded we play "the game with the story where we choose", and my brother in law is now asking me how he can do this with her ("Are you making it all up as you go along??"). But yeah, turns out, this is a fantastic way to entertain a seven year old. Vague ongoing quest, then three steps: get into (place), resolve (minor puzzle), boss fight to finish. Boom. Easy.

So far I've done a bank, a tavern, and an art gallery (it featured an exhibit that was just a room full of slippery banana skins). I'm going to do a pirate ship next

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

A few people have asked so. The best bits:

The aforementioned snake regurgitation bit. What I didn't mention was that at first, when I said she now needed to lie down and digest, her attempt to resolve it was "Nana, you need to find me a heat lamp" and I had to be like, "Nana has bigger problems right now because she is fighting the coin monster, and also you're both trapped down here." Why were they both trapped? Because rather than finding the stairs down to the basement, they chose to hack a hole in the floor and drop through

When they found their first enchanted coin, Niece picked it up with her bare hand. This made her hand swell up to five times the size and turn blue with orange polka dots. Her response? To immediately pick up the coin with the other hand so they could match

Niece decided very suddenly and randomly that slipping on banana skins was funny, and periodically she would competently enter a new room and she'd interrupt me to say "And then I stand on a banana skin!" This is why I made the banana skin modern art installation. Purely for her to enjoy getting through the room

At one point as the witch they decided to jointly fly on the broom to a new location. "You don't need to roll for that," I said, but Niece was enjoying rolling by then, and so did anyway, and somehow rolled a 20. It was the world's greatest broom ride. They had in-flight entertainment, free snacks each, they napped, and they landed 20 seconds before they took off

The morning I left, she saw me and asked if we could play "Dungeons and Dragons", so her father has definitely been discussing playing with her because I never used that name. Delighted to have offered this new past time into their lives, and next time I'll try and write a little detective campaign, I think

[gif87a-com]

[louislumbarcurve]

[lyrslair]

UNMUTE THIS.

[ikkimikki]

This may be my favorite pet costume ever 🥰

[antikittysocial]

@ufo-offical <- it’s you!

[ufo-offical]

ITS ME!!!

*flies past at a slow pace*

[hotcrossedfangs]

[shounenchild]

my favorite part of this whole thing tbh

[my-dailydreams]

[interestingmistakes]

Reblogging this manually. Op doesn't want credit for fear of being terminated.

[snoopyoftheday]

snoopy of the day

[bad-love]

I just wanted to add this quote from the peppermint patty peanuts wiki page about Charles M. Schulz and his relationship with his gay cousin. The source here leads to a book that I did not read but the original source is Schulz's wife who confirmed this in an interview. If I can find the interview again I will link it here but uh. just in case someone tries to claim Schulz was a homophobe on this post again.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.

Anyway I miss him and hope he's doing better with his mental health 🙏🏾

[creatingblackcharacters]

Like say what you want about "bad queer representation", but this was the song that made me openly and happily accept that I was bisexual. To see him up there Black and beautiful, making music that I love, absolutely killing it? Yeah. You couldn't tell me shit. This man made me proud to be out. "This will make them think we're evil for being gay" hey newsflash dawg-

[mars-matrix-deactivated20150713]

[occudo]

Emperor Comatose, Meburger and Eridian language lessons~

[femboy-nation-rise]

I am so glad that I live in a world with trans women and trans men and nonbinary people and intersex people. Things are hard for all of us right now, but I love you all and I am wishing that things get better and easier for all of us! ❤️

[vinterfeminism]

Happy Pride Month everyone!! This Pride Month, don't forget about intersex people!! Intersex people aren't some weird anomaly nor a fictional thing, we are real and we deserve a voice and a space and a community. Intersex people may be straight or not (including lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, or any other sexuality)! They also might be cis or trans or neither or both!! Intersex gender identities can have a very wide variety just like anyone else, and this may be exacerbated by frequently being inconsistently gendered or raised as one gender when their body has traits as what other people may view as the "opposite" (though really men and women aren't all that different so I don't really think there is an opposite, but that's not what this post is about). There are disabled intersex people, intersex people of colour, fat intersex people, old intersex people, young intersex people, and any other type of intersex person you can imagine! It is very possible that you know an intersex person even if you (or even they) don't know it.

This Pride Month, remember to love intersex people and make them feel included in the 2SIALGBTQ+ community!! (I spell the acronym this way since Two Spirit, Intersex, and Asexual and/or Aromantic people are often forgotten or spoken over)

We belong in the queer community, and we deserve to have a voice. Be kind to intersex people and most importantly, try to make an intersex person smile every day this Pride Month!!

[standwithdaanes]

having a process for people who have done morally horrific things to make amends, rejoin community, and do right going forward is actually fundamentally crucial for the left. having a clear and accessible pathway for people to be socially (if not interpersonally) forgiven is how you get people radicalized against capitalism and imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy. its how you turn "these people think i am a bad person" into "these people think something and someone coerced or forced me into doing bad things, and these people want to help me do something about that."

if you want more revolutionaries, you must have a system to turn guilty, traumatized, angry bystanders and collaborators into revolutionaries. and I say a system and process because its not "oh the drone operator said they were sorry and felt bad so its all good now :)" there is no shortcut here. but it is absolutely necessary. no revolution is comprised of morally pure people. in many cases, the most devoted revolutionaries are the ones who know exactly what it is like on the other side.

[vexwerewolf]

Okay, but are they willing to take the biggest risks to make things right?

Like, if these people have done the most damage to society, to the safety and dignity of minorities, to the basic decency upon which the world functions, are they willing to stand at the front of the effort to fix that damage?

As a trans person, I'm not particularly inclined to forgive transphobes unless they've put themselves in harm's way instead of us.

[magicrainbowkitties]

Part of the issue is for that sort of thing to happen, people have to want to change and do better.

Many don't.

[standwithdaanes]

And many do. Why would we waste that desire? Just because many people don't? It's a pessimistic perspective that only hurts the goal of meaningful progress. Progress will not happen because all the Bad People just stop existing.

I am genuinely begging people on this post to realize that our current system CREATES the issues y'all come onto this post to use as proof restorative justice won't work. There are many reasons people resist change, but one very relevant one is that a system where accountability is inherently tied to suffering does not motivate people to put in the effort to change. A deeply hurt person who has developed a lot of very toxic habits, who struggles to imagine a life for themself where they don't rely on those habits to have a sense of identity and safety, may seem like someone who "doesn't want to change." If we assume that is true, then no one tries to help, then there is no reason for that person to believe change is possible or that they could ever be cared for by society given what they've done, so why try?

I am truly fucking begging y'all to talk to like. Any poor white person from the rural US South who realized how evil and systemic white supremacy is, and becomes extremely personally invested in fighting that in their community. This is not some abstract hypothetical. & there are MANY people who would very much be willing to change, if change actually seems feasible. If you see yourself as unforgivable, because everyone around you seems to see you as unforgivable, is it not easier to just dig your heels in?

We NEED!!!!!!! people to be willing to come over to our side and that simply will not fucking happen if your every reaction to "we need to have a process that allows people to make amends and which incentives meaningful change" is "ohhhhhh but that's hard tho :("

Compassion is a practical revolutionary necessity. It's not a thought experiment. Yes, it will be hard, and complicated, and cause a lot of discomfort for everyone on a lot of levels. It will take a hell of a long time to get where we actually want to be. We will fuck it up a lot along the way. There is still no other choice. Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy and it does nothing for anyone.

[vexwerewolf]

You're moving the goalposts and I'm starting to lose my patience. Your original post started with this premise:

having a process for people who have done morally horrific things to make amends, rejoin community, and do right going forward is actually fundamentally crucial for the left

Then, when me and @magicrainbowkitties rightfully pointed out that people who do the worst things have to both accept that they've done those worst things and also that to make amends they'll have to accept the greatest amount of risk in making things right.

You then promptly shifted entirely to

Any poor white person from the rural US South who realized how evil and systemic white supremacy is

Motherfucker, I'm not fucking talking about some guy from Biloxi who said slurs a couple of times - and neither were you, until it became useful to completely misrepresent our caveats.

[standwithdaanes]

"people who do the worst things have to both accept that they've done those worst things and also that to make amends they'll have to accept the greatest amount of risk in making things right."

That is literally what this post is saying we need to have a process for. What exactly are you caveating here????????????

I'm not moving any goalposts. I didn't say "someone who said slurs a couple of times." In the notes of this post, I have elaborated on how this post was prompted by reading about a woman who worked as a fucking drone operator for the US military. I have also responded to people talking about child rapists.

I am really frustrated and annoyed by your "caveats" because they make no sense. I do not fucking understand what you people think I am saying with this post. Like, genuinely, what the fuck did you think I meant by this section:

I say a system and process because its not "oh the drone operator said they were sorry and felt bad so its all good now :)" there is no shortcut here. but it is absolutely necessary. no revolution is comprised of morally pure people. in many cases, the most devoted revolutionaries are the ones who know exactly what it is like on the other side.

Did you think I was just fucking around and smashing random keys when I wrote this? By "process" and "there is no shortcut" I meant "people who did the worst things don't need to accept they've done anything bad and don't need to accept that making amends means accepting a great amount of risk"? Is that what you think I meant?

Its not just y'all. Other people keep coming on this post and adding "caveats" because, as far as I can tell, y'all cannot see a person talking about restorative justice without immediately assuming that they don't understand that bad things require actual effort to amend. The point of this post is that it is necessary to have systems for people to make amends, that actually facilitate and incentivize people to do that hard work, rather than providing zero support or clear pathways to actually go about doing that.

Not a SINGLE part of this implies anything remotely like "you should just forgive anyone whose done anything horrific even if they have done nothing to make amends simply because they said sorry." In fact I LITERALLY included a part of the original post where I explicitly said that's not what I'm saying. So why do people keep feeling the need to come onto this post and just restating the things I already clearly said as if its something that I left out of the post? Why is there this need to keep reiterating, on a post about how it is important to provide mechanisms for people who caused harm to make amends, that people who caused harm need to make amends?

[standwithdaanes]

Okay, having calmed down a little bit, I want to make myself clearer. @vexwerewolf blocked me (after coming onto my post calling me a motherfucker unprompted, but whatever) but still:

My original post is about the need for a formal, explicit process that facilitates people making amends. These caveats seem, to me, to suggest that people want those who have contributed to harm to make amends, but then get defensive at the suggestion that communities need to put effort into actually allowing that change to happen, making it clear how it needs to happen, and having that change actually matter, rather than simply talking about it in the abstract but doing nothing to facilitate it.

I will never disagree that people need to actually make amends and take on responsibility. I am saying that we need to make it clear what we expect from people and actually let that change matter and reintegrate them into our communities. What is best for victims is what actually works to prevent harm, not just in the moment but on a systemic level. If we want people to change, we have to actually make change possible, we have to make the mechanisms for change explicit and accessible, and make it actually matter.

We can talk all day long about how people need to take responsibility and it needs to actually matter and they need to be willing to take risks etc etc, but we do at some point actually need to grapple with what that means. If someone does harm, we need to be able to actually say "okay, this is what the process for taking accountability looks like," and then we need to live with the fact that the end point of this process is that person is still a part of our community. I see a lot of people talking about wanting folks to take accountability, but then also don't seem to want to discuss what that would actually practically mean, don't want to imagine being in a community with people who have done harm, don't want to imagine what social changes would need to occur for this process to be as productive as it could be. And then you end up with this fixation on people who don't want to change, itself a product of a system which does not incentivize meaningful change, used as a cudgel against any discussion about how to incentivize meaningful change.

I understand why people immediately go to "but will they actually take accountability? but will I be expected to personally make a person who harmed me a better person?" but there is a reason I distinguished between social vs interpersonal forgiveness and emphasized this being a process with no shortcuts. Trauma causes an aversion to nuance, because nuance is discomfort and vulnerability and risk, and that's all entirely understandable. But we can't just sit here in our trauma responses forever and talk about how much we want a better world while also being viscerally uncomfortable with what getting to that better world actually involves.

Once again: Yes, it will be hard, and complicated, and cause a lot of discomfort for everyone on a lot of levels. It will take a hell of a long time to get where we actually want to be. We will fuck it up a lot along the way. There is still no other choice. If we cannot hold multiple concepts at once and synthesize them productively, then our great-great-grandchildren will be dealing with the same trauma and horrific systems we are right now, because we want the fruits of a better world without doing any of the labor to get there.

What is frustrating to me most is not people pointing out that those who have done harm need to really take on the burden of accountability and repair. It is the attitude that this is not inherent to the restorative justice ideal I am describing, that clearly I must be forgetting that harm is real and serious or that accountability needs to be equally real and serious. Its the reading into my post some innate dichotomy between being victim-centered and try to keep our community pure of all perpetrators of harm, or being perpetrator-centered and utterly naive to what harm actually means and how it occurs, when the entire point of restorative justice should be that this dichotomy is fake and unhelpful to actual, long-term healing.

[standwithdaanes]

#you people will do Anything to avoid even the thought of potential future discomfort i s2g#i think people see ''we need clearly defined processes for people to make amends & reenter the community''#and read it as ''MY community? My PERSONAL friend group?? you want me to go out for beers w/ my abuser & be besties & let them move in???#why would you say that?!''#nobody is saying that you personally ever have to want that person back in your life#what people ARE saying is that after they've participated in a process of restorative justice & made amends you don't get to-#-demand that they be fired from their job bc seeing them exist in public makes you uncomfortable#in a world where restorative justice has been successfully implemented sometimes your childhood abuser is going to be a teller at your bank#and that has to be okay. you don't have to go through their line! but you do have to accept that they have a right to be there.

This, exactly.

In a world where restorative justice has been successfully implemented sometimes your childhood abuser is going to be a teller at your bank. And that has to be okay. You don't have to go through their line! But you do have to accept that they have a right to be there.

[genderkoolaid]

"absolutely fucking wild shit" and its the idea that people who have abused others will have jobs and exist in the world, as opposed to idk being stood against the wall and shot. because that's working out so well for everyone right now. 99% of punitive justice advocates stop just before the emotional catharsis of violent revenge actually leads to meaningful safety and prevention of harm!

[sunsetbuddie]

when you say something awkward and stupid in a social situation that probably no one will remember except you for the rest of time

[ceruleanheaven]

noooo dont turn off your phone im literally inside it

[hxneyfarm]

Happy pride month specifically to folks on the asexual and aromantic spectrum who oftentimes feel isolated and left out of the conversation. You belong here as much as the rest of us and I hope that you are all loved in a way that is comforting to you.