Mia Bergeron (American, 1980) - Will O Wisps (2025)
d e v o n

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Not today Justin
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hello vonnie
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oozey mess
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Love Begins
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if i look back, i am lost

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

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will byers stan first human second
KIROKAZE
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@short-and-queer
Mia Bergeron (American, 1980) - Will O Wisps (2025)
Gonna step outside my usual programming a bit because that light pollution take and a lot of the responses to it aggravated me so much.
No, wanting to see the night sky isn't a twee retvrn to ghibli-ass take. It's not a matter of some anprim impulse to dismantle industrial society for ~nature aesthetics~, it's an extremely visible symptom of environmental degradation that gets downplayed because the externality seems trivial to most people: "Oh no, the night sky, what ever will we do without it."
But it actively disrupts light-sensitive circadian rhythms in plants and wildlife, which disrupts foraging patterns, reproductive and hibernation cycles, and contributes to wildlife population declines. It's not the major contributor to those declines, but it's an additional point of stress in an ecosystem already stressed by climate change and other forms of industrial pollution. And so much of it is wholly unnecessary.
I don't think people realize how far-reaching the problem is, either. That light isn't just confined to the places people use. You don't escape it by just taking the bus to the edge of town. That light carries, in some cases for hundreds of kilometers. Death Valley has some of the darkest skies in the US, and yet, the dome of light above Las Vegas is visible on the horizon over 250 km away! Anywhere within 50 km of a major urban center, just about anywhere in the world, never gets darker than a night under a full moon.
And this is very much a recent problem too. Before the switchover to LEDs, it was relatively expensive to light places. That meant actually accounting for the energy use and making sure it was being used where it was needed. That light was also warm-colored, so it didn't travel as far. With the decreased cost of lighting, it became standard to light places like daytime whenever they might be needed. Lighting didn't get safer, it just got more thoughtless.
The reason you see astronomy-types sounding the alarm most loudly is because they're the ones who have been seeing the full effects of light pollution and its encroachment on dark skies. It's a hobby for me too, but it's partly because I am a night owl who grew up in a small town with nothing else to do. I used to be able to clearly see the Milky Way horizon to horizon when I grew up in the mid-00s. The last time I visited about five years ago, I could only see it overhead. The population has fallen by like 10%, but the skies are brighter. I can tell when the college decided to leave the football stadium lights overnight. I can tell where the car dealerships that added overnight display lights are. I can even see when trucks with the fuckass LED light bars are coming over a hill from 5 km away.
I'm all for well-lit, safe, and accessible spaces for people to work and play at night. But there is an impact from lighting, and it can and should be regulated like any other point source pollution. It's a pretty straightforward and materialist assessment. But go off about the big scary anprims are coming for your society so people can see the stars I guess, that's not at all a reactionary response to hearing about a problem
#also a lot of the time the solution to light pollution is so stupidly easy it should be a no brainer to do it#like using more directional shades on streetlights#or different color lights instead of bright white#like#you do not actually have to live in the dark all the time to mitigate this problem!!#this is easier than fixing the ozone and we did that!
Okay, but that's an important point! Don't leave the important point in tags!
y'all ever reach the end of google
I'm starting to gain insight into why people turn into conspiracy theorists. Some topics are so totally neglected that it looks like they were intentionally and maliciously erased, instead of falling victim to arbitrary lack of interest.
I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.
This post is about native bamboo in the United States and the fact that miles-wide tracts of the American Southeast used to be covered in bamboo forests
@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.
Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches
And THEN.
I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.
HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.
I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."
Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.
I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.
It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research
There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA
Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."
The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.
It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.
I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.
Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.
The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.
Also, the consistent low estimates of the size Arundinaria gigantea attains (6 feet?? really??) suggests that colonies either aren't living long enough to reach mature size or aren't healthy enough to grow as big as they are supposed to. I doubt we have any clue whatsoever about how its flowers are pollinated. We need to do some research IMMEDIATELY about how much genetic diversity remains in existing populations.
@motherfucking-dragons
it's called the Alabama Canebrake Pitcher Plant and there are, in total, 11 known sites where it still grows.
in general i'm feral over the carnivorous plant variety of the Southeastern USA. we have SO many super-rare carnivorous plants!!!
Protect the wetlands. Protect the canebrakes because the canebrakes protect the wetlands.
Many years ago I did some (non-academic) research on native canes in the USA because I thought I remembered seeing a bamboo-like something in the wild that I'd been told was native, and I thought it might make a nice landscaping accent. But the sources I found said something like "unlike Asian bamboos, the American equivilant barely reaches the height of a man", and I went "nah, that is exactly the wrong height for anything." But if it gets 10 feet and up, I think there are a lot of people who would be VERY happy to use it as a sight barrier in public and private landscaping, and if it means putting in a bit of a wetland/rain garden, all the better. The lack of a good native equivelant to bamboo is something I have heard numerous people bemoan. Obviously it's very important to protect wild sites and expand those, but if it'd be helpful, I bet it wouldn't be hard to convince landscapers to start new patches too.
For instance, a lot of housing developments, malls, etc. seem to set aside a percentage of their land for semi-wild artificial wetlands (drainage maybe?) planted with natives, and then block the messy view with walls of arbovitae or clump bamboo from asia - perhaps it would be a better option there?
Good Lord. Arundinaria isn't just a better option, it's perfect.
I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.
The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.
It grows slowly compared to Asian bamboos, and seems to need some shade to establish, so it would take time to become a good barrier, but no worse than those stupid arborvitae.
plants like this were often intentionally cultivated in planter boxes as a form of water filtration and civil engineering by a bunch of indigenous nations.
There's a reason why Native Americans cultivated canebrakes.
Well, several reasons. As y'all may know, bamboo is stronger than any wood, and therefore it makes a fantastic building material.
The Cherokee used, and still use, river cane to make fishing poles, fish traps, arrows, frames for structures, musical instruments, mats, pipes, and absolutely gorgeous double-woven baskets that can even hold water.
This stuff is, no joke, a viable alternative to plastic for a lot of things. The seeds and shoots are also edible.
Uh I know this is out of left field but I work in plant cloning - it's a lot easier than you'd think to do for plants and it's honestly a really important conservation tool, and good for making a TON of seedlings in a short amount of time. I can look into this genus for like, cloning viability?
I know about reproducing plants from cuttings, rhizome cuttings have proven doable with this species.
Hi y'all, reblogging the Canebrake Post again. It's been over a year since I fell in love with the coolest plant ever. I'm trying to bring it back but I am very small so if any of y'all have a Canebrake nearby you might wanna talk to the owners and contact some local parks and nature preserves yeah?
A lot of people are asking how to distinguish Rivercane from invasive bamboo species. This link should help you!
Here's some distinguishing traits I've observed myself:
River cane has a really full, bushy, leafy look that makes it really hard to recognize as bamboo from a distance, because the stems are harder to see. The shape of the individual cane with its branches and leaves is narrow, because the branches spread out very little, but the foliage is DENSE. It's like a plume.
River cane is stronger, denser and heavier than invasive bamboos I've seen.
River cane stems are always green all the way around, no yellow (unless the plant's been dead for a good long time)
River cane stems feel smooth like plastic to the touch. The common invasive bamboo I've seen here, when you run your hand upwards along it, the stem feels awful like sandpaper.
The biggest way to distinguish them: River cane grows 6-4 feet tall when it's in little patches, and up to 10-12 feet when it's in a large size patch (like, the size of a backyard) It is known to reach up to 15 feet tall nowadays and historical records claim heights of 30 feet or more in fertile river valleys. I really want to stress that it's RARE for it to get big. A canebrake will almost always be many times wider than it is tall (sometimes they grow in very long strips along fence rows)
The best time to look for it is in winter before things leaf out, because it's evergreen and grows in dense masses, making it easy to spot.
Some more cool stuff i've found out—River cane was a common food of bison! Earliest European settlers reported canebrakes so big that "100 bison could graze on a single canebrake." Apparently it used to make extremely high quality forage for livestock, before it was mostly destroyed.
European settlers apparently set their pigs loose in the canebrakes purposefully to destroy them, because the pigs would root up the nutritious rhizomes and kill the plant. Thinking of the relationship between Bison and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Eastern Native Americans and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Plains Native Americans and Bison...it seems like a pattern, huh?
In the case of both bison and canebrakes, they were a fundamental part of their ecosystem, and fundamental part of the indigenous cultures that used them for every material, their musical instruments, their homes, their most advanced arts, and even food (Rivercane shoots are edible just like other bamboo, and supposedly the seeds are edible too!) but European settlers purposefully destroyed the species almost completely. I can't help but wonder if there was a similar motivation.
Books that talk about Rivercane:
Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry by Sarah H. Hill talks about rivercane a LOT and gives tons of details of its uses and history.
Saving the Wild South: The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction by Georgann Eubanks has a whole chapter about Rivercane.
Venerable Trees: History, Biology and Conservation in the Bluegrass is a book about Kentucky, but it talks about rivercane's importance including its relationship with bison. It's only a couple pages out of the whole book but it's still great information.
By the way, though, if you read any very early European account of Kentucky, the word "cane" is everywhere. It's just such a nondescript word it's hard to realize its significance.
On a more personal note...god, I love this plant. Here's another photo I took. When you're in the canebrake, it feels so cut off from the rest of the world; it's shaded, quiet, cool, and someone 10 yards away couldn't even see you.
i actually talked to my neighbor that I learned owns the canebrake. She had no idea what it was but she was excited to learn about it! It was a lovely conversation.
Apparently, she knew I had been down there a bunch of times and thought nothing of it. She said "Yeah I told my husband, If you see her down there, just leave her alone she's doing her thing." In the most sincere way possible, God bless this woman
She said I could transplant all I wanted, too. This was great! ...but I quickly learned how RIDICULOUSLY HARD it is to transplant from a canebrake of this size. The rhizomes are so big and tough, a shovel can hardly get through them, and unless you're at the edge of the canebrake, there's a thick mat of them going every which way. I was driving my whole weight down on this shovel and it kept just denting the rhizome and glancing off.
I did get some transplants but each one took like half an hour because I was fighting for my life!
Also, with a canebrake this size, it doesn't grow little canes that will later become bigger—it shoots up tall canes in a single season. The youngest canes, more accessible and toward the edge of the canebrake, were significantly taller than I was. I cut the top off of one transplant for ease of handling—I had a pair of hand pruners with me that were usually perfectly useful for small limbs, but I could barely get these things through the cane, it's just so strong and dense.
Someone research the material properties of this stuff ASAP. It's insanely strong.
Hi everyone, it's the river cane post again!
Here is some YouTube videos that talk about river cane!
Roger Cain of Keetoowah/Western Band Cherokee shows and talks about Rivercane. This video has a BIG canebrake, the mature canes look as if they could be 15ft tall, but he says it's only a fragment of what they used to be!
Stan the River Man visits a Canebrake in Northern Kentucky. This channel only has 22 subscribers, I feel like I've discovered a rare and priceless treasure
River Cane Renaissance, Episode 1. This guy has devoted a large part of his life to studying Rivercane and now works with the eastern band Cherokee to try and bring it back.
Chattooga river conservancy video on Rivercane, haven't watched the whole thing myself but it looks really good and detailed
These videos barely have any views or comments, but y'all can help! We can spread the knowledge.
Hi everyone.
This is exactly what you think it is.
So i'm in contact with a couple of plant nurseries.
Visiting some of my baby canes in the site where they were planted! They're looking good!
Big things are happening.
For privacy reasons, I share details online of my real world activities only reluctantly, and not very often. But don't be bamboozled into thinking I have forgotten the Canebrakes. It's exactly the opposite.
I have done a lot of networking and made a lot of contacts. I am not alone. There are other people with a story exactly like mine: first, they heard an offhanded mention of forests of American bamboo, which shattered everything they thought they knew about their environment. Next, they became crazed with fascination, searching for knowledge with insane ferocity. Then, they realized that river cane is not only a plant, it is a keystone species symbiotic with indigenous cultures for thousands of years, and it was almost destroyed due to the subjugation of its habitat and the genocide of its caretakers.
The canebrakes' devotees have been working tirelessly to compile every single scrap of information on canebrakes that exists in writing. Every record, every primary source, every historical mention, every comment and conjecture. I have been given access to some of this priceless treasure trove. The wealth of information is amazing, but even more amazing is how much is still unknown.
The history, properties, and ecological importance of the canebrakes is so much more than I imagined.
For example, the massive amounts of seeds produced by huge canebrakes in flowering events fed the passenger pigeon flocks. Likewise the Carolina parakeet was also dependent on canebrakes, and the extinct Bachman's warbler was a canebrake specialist. The destruction of canebrakes could be responsible for why these birds went extinct.
Canebrakes were absolutely fundamental to the indigenous peoples of the Southeast, providing for their every need. Food, shelter, containers, tools, music and art. The settlers foolishly thought the indigenous peoples were not "advanced" enough for metal tools, but in truth, they already had a material superior to metal. River cane by weight is stronger than steel. You can make knives and blades out of it.
I am excited for the future. It seems like momentum is building to save the river cane and bring back the canebrakes, and I am hoping to join together with all the other like-minded people to accomplish this task.
A new organization has just started in Alabama to bring back the river cane. Here is a blog post to read from a few months ago.
Was gonna go in the notes for this but screw it, I've reblogged this before because river cane is so cool Nashville is actually reintroducing it at a couple of parks within the city limits! For example, Shelby Bottoms (where I ride bikes most days) has a bunch of smaller canebrakes dispersed along the river and they seem to be growing steadily Also, Dr. Jon Evans, a professor at Sewanee, recently published a paper demonstrating that there are clonal stands of hill cane there that are around 1700 years old! Still a little inconclusive regarding the flowering/reproduction issue but still! I want to see that too if I can Makes me sad every time I go to the greenways in Knoxville and am like "man you could be introducing so much river cane here, it's great"
1700 years old???
Holy shit okay i looked it up and HOLY SHIT. Published 2 months ago.
1700 years old.
And it says A. appalachiana, (the Appalachian species of native rivercane), has actually NEVER been observed to flower, which means ???? i dont even know what the fuck that means.
THIRTY hectares. THIRTY. That's HUGE.
Does this mean that???? Most canebrakes are so small now because they're babies????
EVERYTHING I LEARN JUST MAKES IT MORE INSANE.
i have a suggestion
1400 year old ginkgo tree.
地點:陝西省西安市古觀音禪寺
Photography: Han Fei
It's nice that loud noises don't stick to clothes like smells do. That would be really bad if they did.
If you're comfortable accusing anyone of faking disability, you're not a real ally to disabled people
One time when I was a kid a group of girls and I had to treat another student for hypothermia by ourselves because she had so many invisible health issues that the adults we asked for help didn't believe us. The student in question was actively hallucinating. When I finally ran for help the people I grabbed were slow as shit to respond, casually joking about how "dramatic" the person in question was.
The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.
Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.
I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so good drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.
Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.
"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."
"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."
"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"
Sincerely, truly, from the bottom of my heart- as someone who isn't physically disabled but hears this shit all the time- fuck off
Didier Faustino
Your 30s aren't too late. Don't let nobody tell you that stupid shit.
Your 40s aren't too late. Don't let nobody tell you that stupid shit.
#as long as you're alive it's literally never too late
they literally deleted all existing reblogs of that post from existence btw<3
and theyre tryin to delete it all again
[Image description: the three images in the original post are marked as deleted for violating Tumblr's User guidelines. The image in the reblog is a screenshot of what the images in the post originally read, and are as follows:
First is a screenshot of a different tumblr post and a reblog of it. This transcript is minorly adapted for screenreaders. The original post reads: "being on this site is fucking crazy because u will see a post go around that's a little "too loud" about transfeminism for tumblrs insanely bigoted ass moderation team, and then by the evening u can go look at the same post and everyone on it will have been banned, and the next day a second post will go around pointing out the malicious and completely unreasonable bans that were executed by staff on the previous post and then by THAT evening those users will also have been banned and we're all expected to just sit there and pretend it isnt happening". The reblog reads: "i SERIOUSLY feel like tumblrs built in transfem eating machine has been getting way hungrier recently... like ive literally been on this account for a week and had at least 15 different mutuals get termed in that time. i refresh my dash and see peoples accounts go down in front of my eyes. i keep being like oh jeez i forgot to follow [mutual] on this blog? and it turns out that, no, she just got banned the second i turned my back. im literally seeing blogs get taken down that havent physically been up long enough to have possibly posted anything objectionable. im seeing "reblog to help me find my mutuals" posts going around where the op has already been nuked again. like come on".
Second is a screenshot of an email header. The subject line reads: "Tumblr Account Terminated".
Third is a screenshot of the beginning of a Wikipedia article. It reads: "The Streisand effect describes a situation where an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information".
End image description.]
Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.
Word for today: wisdom of repugnance
The logical fallacy that because something disgusts you it must be bad
this is probably the funniest example of a tumblr user simply not reading the post theyre reblogging at all
Reblog if you are a freak who is justifying their gross actions
oxidized copper is such a beautiful color palette. The rich reds with the cool teals. Such a vibrant combo. No one is doing it like her.
[ID: Photos of an oxidized copper plate, an oxidized copper pipe, and oxidized pennies. End ID]
hello gorgeous do you come here often
Ao3 is actually massively culturally important and very very good at being what it is. I’m so serious when I say that ao3 needs to be protected as the anti censorship, by fans for fans, nonprofit, volunteer run, expertly designed archival site that it is. You don’t have to read or like fanfiction to understand that on principle, ao3 is a site that should be defended.
Dude with all due respect ao3 was literally created because other fanfiction sites kept deleting and censoring stories with rape, noncon/dubcon, incest, etc porn as well as LGBT ship fics. The site does have a required ratings and warnings systems and tags so that you can exclude works that have themes or content within them that you don’t want to see.
If you don’t like what the site is showing you, you are using it improperly.
There is no such thing as ‘a little censorship’
The above tagger has subjects they dislike; they need to learn to navigate around them so they don’t need to interact. That’s why tagging is so important: allowing the work to be found or avoided as needed.
The problem with ‘a little censorship’ is…endless. You want to control what other people are doing: how do you not see how that’s fucked to begin with?
You want to remove the ‘gross’ or the ‘inappropriate’ subjects, like that isn’t wholly subjective. Incest bothers you? Don’t read incest.
I can’t typically do fics with cheating, but I am not about to go tell the folks who write it that they can’t, purely to make me feel better. My eldest hates unhappy endings, they don’t get to dig up sad ending fics and yell at the author. My middle kid likes a different ship than I do in pretty much all of our common media. I don’t get to tell him he can’t read it anymore.
Fancy, emotionally charged buzzwords don’t change the fact that yeah, all of those are the same concept. You don’t like it, someone else is writing it, others are reading it, and that bothers you. That’s on you, my dear.
You will never have the right to tell someone else they cannot read or write it purely because you dislike it.
Learn to block, learn to filter, learn to accept that the real world has people who like things you do not.
This is the donut/diet argument all over again: you can’t have or dislike donuts, so you want to make sure no one else can have it either. Hard no, my friend. You have control only over yourself, and you need to remember that.
‘But those are bad things, I’m trying to get rid of the bad things only!’ No. They make you uncomfortable. There is a difference. Just as there is difference between reality and fiction. Just like what you think is bad may not, and probably will not, line up with someone else.
Fiction is not promoting rape, incest, whatever else. Kids aren’t going to go out and recreate things they’ve read for shits and giggles anymore than playing grand theft auto is going to make them join the fucking mafia or whatever it is. Sims players don’t suddenly rip their clothes off and drown in the pool, reading about Vash banging his brother a la Flowers in the Attic is hardly going to make someone knock on their actual brother’s door, etc etc etc ad nauseum.
More importantly: there is no end to ‘a little censorship’. Someone else gets to decide what I’m allowed to read and write, and the organizations with that aim have proven over and over and o v e r to be insane. Anything remotely queer is banned for being Bad or Sexualized (because these people have learned that PROTECT THE KIDS is the easiest way to rally the ignorant masses into believing that the rainbow is somehow preying on children… and thus need to be Controlled…)
You don’t want incest, you don’t want no con, someone else doesn’t want any form of kink, a third busybody can’t stand that boys kiss boys, a fourth can’t handle trans characters, another carves out the ace spectrum, yet more go after the stories exploring gender dynamics in the ABO verse.
That’s not even getting into politics, where it turns into now no one can post stories that explore changes in government, that are anti war, that are hopepunk and show all the ways society could be better. Or, on the opposite spectrum, things akin to the anarchist’s cookbook: how to make weaponry to forcibly make things change.
Oh, can’t have books that talk about different religions, either. Can’t have books that let girls know they should be treated equally, that they can do whatever they please, that they’re more than a walking baby factory. can’t have stories with magic, that’ll lead to evil thoughts. Can’t have stories with explicitly consensual anything, gotta keep the population pure and filled with shame about their desires. (There is a reason so many romance novels have a bit of unsavory shenanigans: the thrill of being wanted so overwhelmingly in a world where feeling that want means you are Not a Good Girl)
We’re living this, right now, again.
This is why knowing your history is so important.
Look at books have that been banned, burned. I’m going to oversimplify but: Picture books (and tango makes 3) because two male penguins adopted a baby, and we can’t let our kids know that’s acceptable, never mind that I, a child of a lesbian, literally bawled my eyes out upon finding that book in my twenties. I would read it every day to my own toddlers, because look! They’re like Awa and Gramma! 1984, because the entire point is how burning books is Bad. Animal Farm, the new government is just as bad as the old and we the people deserve better. Gone With the Wind, for being about the American south and not only making it seem like maybe slavery is kinda meh but also hinting at a woman having a sexuality. The scandal. Harry Potter. Not because JK turned out to be transphobic trash, but because it’ll turn kids into satanists, y’know, because of all the magic. A thing that is totally real and possible to recreate. Are you there god, it’s me, Margaret. Because it talked about menstrual cycles.
As an American, seeing headlines where kids are banned from the library because of policies like this is terrifying. Kids in Florida have zero books in the classroom. They have to be screened to be considered ‘appropriate’. And that means whitewashed, bland, and unchallenging of the norms the neo nazis are pushing. Can’t have anything about the struggles of the non white populace, can’t have anything at all about the queers, can’t have anything that paints the south in a bad light.
There is a bill currently attempting to pass into law, KOSA: kids online safety act. Under the guise of ‘protect the kids’ the government here is literally attempting to sanitize and censor the entire internet, for everyone. AO3 will be on the list of places they’re going to try and nuke. Yeah, even your cute vanilla super straight happy ever afters. All in the name of making sure imaginary little Johnny doesn’t think kissing boys, wearing pink, becoming friends with the Mexican kid down the street, or opposing genocide is acceptable behavior.
Censorship is not about protecting you, me, the mythical children, or anyone at all. It never has been.
Censorship is purely about control.
Censorship is about controlling your awareness, your intelligence, your ability to realize you are living in the worst timeline, and your ability to organize and fight back. Censorship is division. Censorship is deliberate cruelty meant to cripple you and make you malleable.
After all, you’ve given up your ability to explore new ideas, to think outside the box they’ve put you in. You are tamed, declawed, and too stupid to notice now. Don’t worry your pretty little blonde haired and blue eyed head about it now, Julie, the government will tell you want you need to know. Oh, what happened to your neighbor? Sweetie, what neighbor? No one was ever there. Repeat after me, no one was ever there.
AO3 is protecting my ability to read and write whatever the fuck I want, while giving me the search capabilities to NOT run into shit I dislike. AO3 is giving my teens a safe place to read and explore their own sexualities and interests, to engage in uncomfortable situations in a controlled way. AO3 is giving my teens a place to practice being human.
Censorship is always the bad guy.
AO3 is a fucking godsend, a pillar of creativity and freedom of engagement, and should be revered as such.
it's actually fucking crazy that people are still parroting the idea that you need to tell people that you're trans before dating kissing or yes even having sex with them. so called allies are still talking about transness like it's this inherently dirty and corruptable aspect of someone, something that's necessary to clarify before intimacy in order for it to be consensual; as if being trans is a rot that can spread and stain someone, as if demanding your partner reveal private information about themselves without you asking is somehow a legitimate personal concern akin to knowing if your partner has an sti.
if a person went on a date with a trans person, kissed them, had sex with them (yes, people can have sex with trans people without knowing that they're trans, how can you possibly belive in the legitimacy of transition if you don't think this is true?) and enjoyed themselves the entire time, they consented. and if they wouldn't have had sex if they knew, sorry, that's their problem. it's ridiculous to expect people to clarify every microscopic aspect of their identity and history on the off chance that the person they're dating has an irrational preference against one of them. and everyone knows this is ridiculous, which is why this logic is only used as a cudgel against trans people. fix yourselves
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
i know folks are gonna call me a pedo for this one, but i grew up seeing my mom and grandma naked. they had health issues and at times needed care and help showering. and i truly think more kids need to be shown the nonsexual reality of naked women at a young age. there is nothing sexual about my grandmothers breasts, they were simply body parts. more women die of heart attacks because people are too afraid of breasts to do real chest compressions, because they are scared to touch their breasts. the sexualization of our bodies literally kills us. i need people to be more normal about naked bodies and i'm 100% serious.
Scopophobia
Painted with watercolor and acrylic, animated digitally in photoshop and after effects
A few details on how I made this:
This started off as a traditionally done painting; mostly watercolors and then acrylic for highlights
I scanned the painting into photoshop, then cut each eye into different layers, using clone stamp/ content aware fill where needed and redrawing things like highlights and veins.
Also in Photoshop I used the puppet warp tool to adjust the exterior layer for blinking; again using the clone stamp to fill in eyelid space. Each blink had 3-5 frames.
In after effects I animated the irises and veins, and used the puppet pin tool to warp the eyelid shape to match the movement.
And then I repeated that process 21 times :)