bunbun in flames

20s they/them writer trying out tumblr blogging; @crazibunnie on twitter; AO3 AG1234VL; open for asks :D; support on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/crazibunnie

[sugarbunbie]

if i was someone else, who loved me (bunbie, 2025)

[moringmark]

[heatherwitch]

My resolution last year was to do one thing before bed that would make my morning feel easier, and that’s become a daily habit that I’m carrying into this new year.

Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.

Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.

And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.

What stayed the same each day is that I would take a moment to think of what I could do for my future self and do it, even after a hard day. And I would wake up knowing that I had done my best and any effort—no matter how small—was a kindness to myself.

[one-bite-is-undercover]

I’ve been doing a lot of “a treat for future me” moments lately.

[heatherwitch]

That’s a great way to look at it, and I love this artist! (Anna-Laura: instagram / website)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

This is somewhere to be.

[Commission for @rinichey]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x TMA: The Taciturn Tapes (part 1, part 2)

[anais-mirliaz]

frolicking with mama :)

[en-theos]

funny how i'm now seeing ''backlash'' against the 'just do it scared' slogan because it reads exactly the same as the faux edgy 'just do it! :D' 'i have anxiety, karen' stuff of like. 2014. 'do it scared' started as advice for people with fear paralysis to help them realize that there's a way through while acknowledges the fear, not a dismissal. it was also never meant as a long term solution to crippling anxiety. duh. bad faith reading if you ask me

[lostwoodscutie]

[wasabikitcat]

Documenting what is quite possibly the best exchange I have ever seen on this website.

[cheshiregrinfu]

[vrumblr]

He will not be exiled again

[gamer-crow-deactivated20250412]

I enjoy all parts of this post. The trans leash, the confusion, the heartfelt display of affection we give to our pets. The biography, the history lesson, and the morality of keeping cats indoors are all bonuses.

[ospreyonthemoon]

Hey thats me again.

Anyway guess whos 18 now!!!

Frank

[mrsjdavis]

This post has EVERYTHING...

[ash-the-tiefling]

@skyethequeerwolfwizard

[skippysy]

Crowley isnt used to sitting on top dont bully him angel

[moonshinemagpie]

okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

[moonshinemagpie]

update!!!!

So Harriet Jacobs's brother was named John Swanson Jacobs, and in her memoir she's like "btw my brother ran away too." But we don't learn a lot about him.

Well, guess what? John Swanson Jacobs wrote a memoir, too. And it was rediscovered. Recently. It was published in full for the first time since 1850 last year, in 2024.

Harriet and John Jacobs both ran away, but they lived very different lives. Harriet Jacobs took a more "typical" path for a Black abolitionist of her era: She asked a white abolitionist to take the credit for her book, since otherwise it wasn't going to get published/read (it was only proven in the 21st century that Harriet herself wrote it).

But John Swanson Jacobs?

He gave all of America the middle finger, became a sailor, traveled the world (the Caribbean, England, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, India, all over), then ended up in Australia and got his memoir published in a newspaper in Sydney, where he didn't need white people's "permission" to publish it, didn't have to accept the indignity of having a white editor, and didn't need to pretend that he wasn't really the author of his own book.

He called it The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, referring to the 600,000 slaveowners living in the US.

Like, whoa.

The historian who discovered his memoir,,and wrote a biography on him, describes him as a man with "apocalyptic intelligence."

It is so cool that this book exists. And it kinda sucks because I just know if it'd come out in 2020 people would have been all over it, but I haven't seen it in any bookstores. I got my library to stock it; maybe you can request it at your library, too.

The new edition is annotated by Jonathan D. S. Schroeder, the historian who found Jacobs's memoir in an 1850 Australian newspaper. He recommends--and I do too--reading Harriet and John Swanson Jacobs's memoirs back-to-back, and the annotations in Six Hundred Thousand Despots highlight parts where the siblings' books corroborate or differ from each other's accounts, something I'm personally enjoying a lot.

The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots

Lost on the other side of the world since 1855, the story of John Swanson Jacobs finally returns to America. This comprehensive edition incl

So yeah. Our only extant fugitive slave narrative written by a world-traveling sailor who told all of America to fuck off and went to live his life. Very very cool book. 10/10 recommend.

[jackironsides]

I thought that if John Jacobs' story was published in an Australian newspaper, then it would almost certainly be on Trove (the online newspaper and magazine archive for the National Library of Australia), and I was right. You can read the original text (obviously sans annotations) as it was printed in The Empire in two parts, here and here.

Also while I'm linking things, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl can be found on Gutenberg here.

[teaboot]

Not pertinent to anything in particular but I do think it's kinda weird that we keep depicting cavemen in media crawling around on all fours covered in dirt with tangled, matted hair, speaking in broken, cobbled-together toddler language when like.

They were us.

Like literally genetically they were US, just like. A while ago.

Like

Would you trust a TV caveman with a baby? Probably not

A real life caveman though??? I think they'd be at least okay at it

[sheilikhal]

This is actually really important and comes up in Anthropology classes all. The. Time.

As long as homo sapiens have existed, we have had the same emotional and mental capacity as you and I do today. You nailed it. They were US. Even Neaderthals existed alongside and had offspring with Homo Sapiens for many thousands of years.

There's much evidence that cavemen would have had complex spoken language, culture (learned information passed down), symbolic interpretation, and I think they most certainly would have been able to handle holding a baby. In fact I have my suspicisions that an ancient homo sapiens mother may be a more present, attentive, and knowledgable mom than I could be today.

Do not let media trick you into believing we are the pinnacle of humanity. Unilinial evolution theory (google it quick I beg) is BUNK, GARBAGE, and the root of so much evil.

We've been human for a long, long time, and we are not inherently better than all those who came before.

[fresne999]

One the most profound experiences of my life was visiting Font de Gaume, which has 12 thousand year old paintings. They use a technique where the horses appeared to run across the wall when seen in flickering firelight. There was a bison the wall staring at us with such attitude, I could practically hear him. I had the most profound feeling of those ancient artists reaching forward to lay their hands on my shoulders. To say, "This was my world." It was a profoundly moving experience.

Some years later, I went to the Orkney islands where we visited a tiny family run museum of artifacts from the chambered tomb at the other end of the farm. They handed me a pestle once held by some neolithci human.They'd worn groves where the thumb and forefinger would be for better grip.

[tlirsgender]

I'm kind of obsessed with the way sheep are handled. So efficiently. It always looks kind of unpleasant at first and then you notice the sheep are fine with it. They're always being flipped upside down and rolled down a chute or some shit. A shepherd will be tossing that thang in the air and spinning it like pizza dough & the sheep just lets it happen

[tlirsgender]

I really believe that sheep have achieved a level of empty-headedness rarely found in mammals. A sheep's thought processes seem more in line with that of a jellyfish than most other ungulates. Absolutely nothing going on behind their cute little eyes. Maybe the most domesticated an animal has ever been

[tlirsgender]

It's just fluff all the way down. I'm on the verge of tears

[shepfax]

this is the only shit I open TikTok for

[unikron-kitten-kat]

Pickle :}

[acerbaa]

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before.  Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

love letter from the afterlife, andrea gibson

[charlesoberonn]

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

[charlesoberonn]

To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.

They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.

[charlesoberonn]

The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

It’s more nuanced than “cult” or “not cult” and doesn’t make false equivalences between groups

It’s versatile, applying to groups big and small, and cults of all kinds, religious, political, financial, etc.

It focuses on what’s important, which is what the cult does to its members, and those members’ experiences, and not on irrelevant details like how uncommon their doctrines are or whether they have a charismatic leader

[charlesoberonn]

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

#you might notice that there are a lot of similarities between cult techniques and those of abusive partners#and that is an important thing to be aware of

yah that goes in the post

[charlesoberonn]

The creator of the BITE Model considers abusive relationships to be two-person cults.

[forgotn1]

It’s important to note that almost every sect of evangelical christianity in the US today fails the BITE Model.

[alp-crispy]

This was the post that lead to breaking my JW mindset. Been a while since I seen it.

[charlesoberonn]

I’m glad I could help in your deconstruction, if only a little bit. I wish you all the luck in your journey moving forward.

[backseatloversz]

📸:mark beemer / july 11, 2025

[theunquietworld]

i’m reading emma thompson’s diaries from the filming of sense and sensibility and there are some really great bits

danny de vito sent good-luck flowers on their first day of shooting

in the published draft of the script, colonel brandon and willoughby fight a duel offscreen after brandon confronts him about impregnating beth, brandon’s ward

“kissing hugh [grant] was very lovely. glad i invented it. can’t rely on austen for a snog, that’s for sure. we shoot the scene on a hump-backed bridge. two swans float into shot as if on cue. everyone coos. ‘get rid of them,’ says ang [lee]. ‘too romantic.’

for a number of outdoor scenes, they would fire a shotgun in the air just before the cameras started rolling to get the local crow population to shut the fuck up for a few minutes

there was a dedicated line item in the budget for hiring flocks of sheep for exterior shots, ang lee was determined to use them as often as he could

“later found ang looking at the estuary with a mournful expression. i went and stood beside him. after a moment he said, waving towards the water, ‘tide goes in, tide goes out, tide goes in, tide goes out — and still no sex.’ ‘do you miss it?’ i enquired, after i’d stopped laughing. he nodded sadly. his family won’t be back for weeks.”

while filming the scenes at the palmers’ house with the screaming baby, it turns out that “we’ve hired the calmest babies in the world to play the hysterical thomas. one did finally start to cry but stopped every time chris yelled ‘action’. later: babies smiled all afternoon. buddhist babies. they didn’t cry once. we, however, were all in tears by 5 p.m.”

“very nice lady served us drinks in hotel and was followed in by a cat. we all crooned at it. alan [rickman] to cat (very low and meaning it): ‘fuck off’. the nice lady didn’t turn a hair. the cat looked slightly embarrassed but stayed.”

during the london ballroom scene hugh laurie kept treading on the train of imelda staunton’s gown, “which pulled it down so far it exposed her boobs. keep it in, i said, but she wouldn’t.”

“sunday, 11 june: drank far too much last night and woke at 5:30 a.m. could’ve gone on drinking all night. quite grateful for a hangover, it provides a bit of peace. walked on to my balcony completely naked last night and took the couple that have moved into the suite next door slightly by surprise. walked back in calmly affecting insouciance and then bit all my pillows, one after the other.”

while resetting a scene involving a carriage, “ang rode off on a bicycle and didn’t return. found him locked in the loo at trafalgar, having broken the key. he’s being rescued at present.”

“noon. finish scene with alan. me: ‘oh! i’ve just ovulated.’ alan (long pause): ‘thank you for that.’”

“hugh g. in a spot of bother up la, apparently. something to do with a blow job. it’s all right for some, i thought.”

[lucybellwood]

Reblog if you, too have calmly affected insouciance and then bit all your pillows, one after the other

[copperbadge]

A reminder that Emma Thompson's response to winning a Golden Globe for the screenplay of this film is the finest acceptance speech ever to be given.