Ruiner's Wife

My little corner of Tumblr. You'll see anything that strikes my fancy including: horse stuff, fandom stuff, lolita stuff and other things I enjoy.

[tikkety-tok]

This is what Rasputin would've wanted.

[teaboot]

I feel like I'm being seduced like one of those fancy rainforest birds

[fruitpilled]

is it working

[teaboot]

Yes

[magnuspool]

[cosmos-kitty]

Finishing off the year with an idea I've wanted to paint for a while, a cat in the clouds ☁️

[dreadkithulhu]

[ruinerswife]

I have absolutely loved using @thestorygraphapp the past few months. I have been so thrilled with all the fun graphs and stats. I also really love the user review prompts and info that gets displayed with the books.

I've joined a few reading challenges for 2023 and I'm pretty excited to expand my reading. I've joined #20BooksByBlackWomen, disability appreciation, and a genre challenge.

If you head over to Storygraph, I'm Amylynnknitsreads

[homunculus-argument]

Never forget, if someone asks you an invasive question, you can always reply by asking them "do you think that's a normal thing to ask people?"

Do it in a super casual and cheery tone, like you were asking about their favourite food.

[gallusrostromegalus]

This is something you can, and actually SHOULD do, with a small change: Keep your tone neutral when you ask this, because in my experience, you get one of two responses:

-People who KNEW they were being rude will know you've caught them at it and will mumble excuses and shut up. You've shown them that behavior won't be rewarded, which is what really stops them, and hopefully they'll make better choices in the future. - but you will get some people who do genuinely think that that WAS a normal question to ask because THEY get asked that by their mom/boss/other authority figure asks them things like that all the time??? This person is being taken advantage of and needs help. You then explain, as gently as you can, "No. That's actually really personal and sensitive information most people don't talk about because X*, and it's extremely inappropriate of Authority Figure Z to ask that. You, and everyone else deserve privacy and information security." they'll go "oh. I didn't know that." or some close variation, and then you tell them "no harm, no foul, and I'm glad you know now." and then change the topic. You probably won't get a landmark "oh my god I had no idea I'm reevaluating my entire life" moment, but just hearing that "No, that's not normal and not okay" is enough to get the ball rolling in the right direction to protect themselves.

*X is here to explain generally why Privacy and information security is important. For instance, if they're asking questions about health and finance, you can explain that that's legally protected information to prevent fraud and in order to keep it safe, it HAS to stay secret.

[pagesinmylife]

I feel like public libraries don’t get enough hype. Like, you’re telling me all I have to do is give you my name and address and promise to bring the books back and I’m allowed to take as many as i want??? And I can check them out over and over again if I need to??? And I only pay if I damage or lose the book???? If this is where my tax money is going then please keep on taxing.

[gemini--witch-deactivated202411]

Great news! A lot of libraries are shifting to not even having fees for late returns or lost books because they've found that removing those fees and fines up the chances of people returning the books! Support your local library, they're delirious with joy every time people use them! They've got ebooks and audiobooks too! Some even have maker spaces! My local library has everything from a 3D printer to fun kits for people to make music with freaking fruit!

[ruinerswife]

I love Libby for helping me make the most of my local and university employers digital library offerings. Audiobooks and e-books!

I've exponentially upped my book consumption!

[itsjustaplantman-blog]

[lastsonlost]

upgrade 

[im-in-way-2many-fandoms]

I can’t wait till this is on my dash again on December 24th tbh.

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

Concept: You walk outside one night and notice that there are two full moons. A few hours go by and they don’t seem to move.

You stare up at them.

They blink.

[kainoliero]

You blink back. It’s only polite to return the greeting of the Big Night Cat.

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

I meant for this to be all spooky and ominous, but fuck it, this is way better. I love the Big Night Cat. She is beautiful. I support her.

[midnightmart]

hand slipped so heres a gif

[shitpostsorcerer]

Reblog to respect the Big Night Cat

[l-ouroboros]

Cosmic cat! ✨💫🌙⭐️🌕

[2ndplacewins]

In class we were talking about how cats teach themselves to hunt around their collar bells, and this dude followed that up with “well you know how Santa has those reindeer covered in those bells, right?” 

and what he going for was “the bells on cat collars are the same that reindeer are pictured wearing”

But what *I* heard was “Santa’s Reindeer are predator animals that are covered in bells for our protection” and let me tell you I did not appreciate that.

[snakebitcat]

Just hear those slay bells jingling.

[anotherpapercut]

I just want to say I have absolutely 0 sympathy whatsoever for anyone complaining about anything homeless people do. oh you saw human shit on the ground?? hmm maybe it's because THEY DONT HAVE A TOILET. oh you saw someone cleaning themselves in a public restroom? maybe because THEY DONT HAVE A FUCKING SHOWER. oh no a homeless person is living in a tent and you think it's ugly?? CRY ABOUT IT IN YOUR FUCKING HOUSE. oh my goodness homeless people sleeping on the ground and they're in your way!!!! yeah THEY DONT HAVE A BED

if seeing homeless people bothers you that much then good news! you have some choices! 1) let them all live with you in your house! 2) start pressuring your local government to stop criminalizing the homeless and start giving them financial and medical assistance! 3) shut the fuck up and die!

[beckettmariner-deactivated20200]

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

[linguisticparadox]

Okay howmst the fuck has a ship doctor in the far future never handled a birth without the father present? Are sperm donors and gay couples and trans women no longer a thing in the bajillionth century CE?? :/

[thatoldantique]

I while understand the frustration with erasure sometimes it helps to look at things through the cultural context of when something was made. Star Trek the Next Generation was made in 1987, this particular episode I believe aired in 1988 a time when a future where the husband was always present for the birth would have been amazing to many of the people watching the show as men had only been allowed to be present for the birth of their children for 10/15ish years at that point in the US.

Women (and many men) fought for decades with hospitals to even have men allowed in the delivery room during the early stages of labor, which can last for several hours, and hospitals only began to give in to their requests in the 1960s but even then they would be kicked out of the room by hospital staff before the actual birth took place. So many of the couples watching the show would have had to go through labor without having/being allowed to support their spouse regardless of their wishes. Having the child’s father present for the birth only began to happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Which means most people watching this show either went through birth without the support of their spouse, were not allowed to support their spouse during the birth of their child, or their own mother’s went through that during their birth.

A future where the husbands were always present for the birth was still a little crazy to consider in the late 1980s. A good kind of crazy for the people living in that time, it showed a future where the wishes of the couple were finally consistently listened to by medical professionals as a result of the actions of people during their or their parent’s lifetimes. And it does that by also subverting it in allowing Data to step into the role of the father when the father was unknown and/or unwilling/unable to fill that role (I’ll be honest my knowledge of Next Gen is a bit spotty and I have not seen this whole episode, just a piece of it at family Thanksgiving). The woman’s desires as to how she would give birth are listened to and respected, something that still doesn’t happen in many hospitals now and would have been seen as even more revolutionary then. So while it isn’t perfect I think this scene was actually fairly impressive for its time and cultural context and shows a future that many people of that time would have seen as ideal.

[cannon-fannon]

I think this kind of contextual understanding and analysis is really important because things that look antiquated now were revolutionary then. I remember reading that the mini skirts in Star Trek TOS were legot just in fashion (about 64’ ish), one of the actresses (the one that played Rand) requested they be in the show and both her and Nichelle Nichols said they didn’t see them as demeaning but liberating in that time and context. Where as NOW it looks like ‘sexy male gaze’ but then it wasn’t.

[elfwreck]

Miniskirts are comfortable and easy to move in - unlike longer bulkier skirts, which had previously been required for “modesty.” And unlike the approach of “we’ll just put them in pants,” miniskirts made a statement that women crew-members weren’t being treated like men. Miniskirts were a way to say “I can be an attractive woman, wear comfortable clothes, and still look professional and do a serious job.” 

The clothing for that message today would be different. 

[prismatic-bell]

This is also why the bridge crew of TOS may seem “tokenistic” today. When it came out, the Cold War was in full swing and “Soviets” were maligned and hated, Black people could not count on their right to vote being honored, and mixed-race people (like Spock) were called horrible things like “half-breed” and “zebra.” A white man was in charge of the ship, but Gene Roddenberry was fully aware that a chunk of the viewership read him as queer, and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DISCOURAGE THAT READING, at a time when “homosexual activity” was illegal in the United States!

By today’s standards, “one of everything? How tokenistic.” In 1966? “A Black woman, a Russian, a man from multiple cultures, and a man who loves differently, all top of their fields, all working together and finding common ground to learn, grow, and help where they can? What a wonderful future!”

[charismat1c-megafauna]

Also I’m sorry but like. A show also featuring a Japanese man who isn’t a stereotype but part of the crew, having a Scottish character be a part of the central cast (idk if I need to get into why this is important, but considering how England has continuously tried to erase Scottish culture and identity, and the stereotype of Scots as bumbling bumpkins, etc, its kind of nice to see a Scotsman who’s the best of the best at his job).

Moreover, a lot of kids watched this show. MLK himself contacted Nichelle Nichols and asked her to stay on the show when she was considering leaving, because “you don’t have a Black role, you have an equal role,” and there wasnt many Black role models on tv. I can only imagine how Black kids, Asian kids, and mixed race or mixed culture kids felt seeing people like them on tv. Hell, seeing Uhura on screen is what inspired Whoopi Goldberg as a little girl.

Also, yeah, its easy to look back and say ‘damn, fathers weren’t there in the delivery room? What assholes’ but no like they legitimately were not allowed in there.

[gayahithwen]

Tiny correction: while George Takei is Japanese, and while Sulu thus looks like what we in the 20th-21st century consider to be an ethnically Japanese man, Hikaru Sulu was Pan-Asian by design. His last name is not Japanese. And Roddenberry designed him like that intentionally, because while there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in the US at the time (I mean, hell… George Takei himself spent years in Japanese internment camps during WW2), there was also a lot of other anti-Asian sentiments, and Roddenberry intentionally put ALL of it on the character of Sulu.

Like, all the years of anti-Chinese racism in the US? Sulu. Anti-Japanese sentiments left over after WW2? Sulu. Korean War in 1950-52? Sulu. The Vietnam War, with Johnson in 1965 (a year before TOS started airing) choosing to start sending American troops into the conflict? Sulu.

Sulu was Roddenberry’s desperate attempt to show all Asian people as inherently worthy, inherently human, and yeah, he probably put kind of too much on Sulu’s shoulders, but it was the 1960s and Roddenberry fucking cared about representation, so he did what he could.

Just, you know… a little bit more historical Star Trek context

[gholateg]

Also to hammer this home?

Scotty was third in line for the captain’s chair. The only non-Kirk who had the con more then him was Spock.

He was smart, he was a *ranked* crewmen, he was a gentleman, he wasn’t a skirt chaser, and he was capitol L loyal. The only time he got into a fight was when someone both went after his Captain, AND his Ship.

And he was Scottish. 

That’s so above and beyond the typical Scottish stereotype even TO THIS DAY.

[earhartsease]

Dr Polaski was coded as something of an arse just so they could make their valid points about equality and bigotry using her as a foil. Yes it was kind of clumsy from a modern perspective, but it was also kind of groundbreaking (not least because you didn’t usually get arses being played by women)

[aqueerkettleofish]

I am hard-coded to put this on any post that mentions MLK and Nichelle Nichols.

Also, it’s very worth noting that the “token minority character” label doesn’t apply in any way to these characters.

Tokens are there to present the appearance of diversity. Whereas Roddenberry created a diverse cast in an era where there wasn’t even a need for the appearance of diversity. Roddenberry didn’t put these characters in because he wanted to look diverse– he put them in to BE DIVERSE.

[puffsaddy]

[papapiusxiii]

From Leonard Cohen’s final letter to his dying muse, Marianne Ihlen. She died in July 2016, and Cohen followed her shortly after, dying in November 2016.

“Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”

— Leonard Cohen

[corvidmonster]

Cockatoo

[ruinerswife]

I love the Libby app so much. I've listened to 11 books since downloading it in September.

I haven't grabbed any ebooks yet, but might soon.

I also love Storygraph as a Goodreads alternative. It's so fun seeing all the graphs and breakdowns of my reading.

[llamagoddessofficial]

[This idea has been rattling in my brain and I had to share it.]

I know we all love the ‘humans are space orcs’ concept… but imagine, onboard the new ship they’ve been assigned to, the human meets an actual space orc. A massive monster… fangs and tusks and scars and a battle-hardened stare, looming over all the other life forms on the ship in its thick indestructible armour it refuses to remove. It barely drinks, it doesn’t need sleep, its massive shoulders are heavy with the terrible things it has experienced. Compared to the squishy & delicate human body, this thing is a walking tank.

… Except instead of hating/ignoring one another, the human and the monster start bonding over both coming from death planets. The human is excited to find a life form who doesn’t quiver with fear at the vague description of a jellyfish and the monster is ecstatic to meet someone who understands the feeling of being bitten by a qua’lem (cats are pretty close). They sit together and compare dangerous animals and locations as the other aliens look on in confusion and fear… oh, you also have dense jungles of deadly hidden predators, boiling acid lakes, tamed predatory killers, and areas with horrendously high and low temperatures? Sick!! 

It doesn’t take long before the two of them become totally inseparable. The human loves not feeling like some kind of crazy outsider and the monster is overjoyed they’ve finally found an equal in this unkillable marshmallow.

Monster: When I was a youngling, a grol-lik stung straight through my armour. The pain lasted for approximately 16 human hours. Human: Oh yeah man, I get that. As a kid I got a wasp stuck in my shirt. It stung me like four times, it was awful, and all my cousins just laughed at me… Monster: [using their arm screen to research human courting methods] I see.

[driiaz]

Not quite an ‘Orc’ per-se, but eh, close enough. See here giant spiky Deathworlder simping for tiny shouty Deathworlder.

[marlynnofmany]

This art is amazing and makes it so much better.

[arosunflower]

why is it that in unrequited love situations its always the person who doesn’t feel the same getting villainized? especially if they were friends with other person beforehand? 

its not their fault someone caught feelings for them. 

they were just living their lives and minding their own business when out of nowhere someone is lamenting about how much their heart yearns for them or whatever and like. dude i am literally just existing how is this my problem

[arosunflower]

to the alloromantics who are being real aggressive in my inbox over this post: why do you think your feelings are more important than everyone elses? you are allowed to be sad or upset because feelings are unrequited, but you do not get to act like the other person is the bad guy.