#dessa

[vaspider]

First round done on the new tattoo, commemorating my final independence from a toxic parental relationship & featuring Dessa lyrics. It'll be beautifully healed by the time I'm front row at her Portland show in November.

[nyanamo]

"H-how do you know my son"

[foxyanghole]

Happy June, everyone! <3

[hopecel]

And she was just, like, super expressive. If you've ever seen Aby Wolf perform live, you know, her hands are in it, her body is in it, and her face is in it, she's just a voice made flesh. And, yeah, we kind of struck up a connection there at an open night put on by The Poetry, which was like a musical collective here many moons ago.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Yoooo you read Graceling!!!! I just recently reread Bitterblue, remembering nothing about it beforehand, and I was floored by its amazing depiction of abuse/gaslighting. I never would have thought to represent gaslighting as an evil superpower. Using it to support the plot of a political mystery novel is just so cool.

I fully agree. Normally I'm not a big fan of characters having had their memories changed, since it risks giving the author a little too much license to straight-up lie to the reader to conceal information, and/or introduce a world with no internal logic at all which doesn't make for an enjoyable story.

BUT that's clearly not what Cashore is doing with Bitterblue. Instead, that plot is so clearly about propaganda, about how history becomes story and what's lost along the way, and about how a "hero" is in the eyes of the people who benefited from that hero's violence. Like, are George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson heroes? It sure as heck depends on whether you ask a white person, or a Black or Native American one. Human memory is short, history is malleable. People in power can edit the past.

Are you a butcher or a great warrior? Are you a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Depends on who's telling the story and how. The fantastical interpretation in Graceling is clearly Cashore pulling the classic SF trick of taking something figurative and making it literal, and asking a lot of fascinating questions about the responsibilities of leadership along the way.

[alder-knight]

How to resist like Minneapolis

Meet the block, shop the indies, and check on your people.

The Minneapolis Model 

Actionable steps today to be ready to resist tomorrow:

1. Mutual aid networks are made up of neighbors who know each other. Ask to borrow a screwdriver from the new family in the apartment down the hall—find any excuse to meet your neighbors and trade numbers.

These will be the people in the encrypted chat.

2. Small businesses don’t have shareholders to answer to or boards to consult, so they can act on conscience quickly. Shop local when you can; visit immigrant-owned restaurants; chat at the register. 

These will be the drop sites for food and supplies.

3. In a crisis, information must be shared quickly. Curate your online feeds now by following at least a few local nonprofits, neighborhood groups, activists, and local reporters.

These will be your trusted sources to mobilize protests quickly and warn of new dangers to avoid.

4. Consider how the role you play in daily life can be useful in a crisis. Graphic designers can share signs to post in windows. Cooks can make soup to warm protesters. People with minivans can take cans to the food drive and children to school. The brewer’s empty beer boxes can be collapsed to make signs for the march. The affluent can donate money and ask their friends to do the same. Take stock of your personal skill set and assets.

These will be the resources that you can leverage without instruction.

5. Your community includes the people whom you don’t like. Engage in conflict responsibly. Keep public arguments issues-focused and avoid trolling. The pay-what-you-can vegan cafe might not have much to say to the gun club during ordinary circumstances, yet find themselves partnered in exceptional times.

These will be the members of your coalition, even if they are not your friends.

6. The circumstances that call for a surge of public resistance are necessarily confusing, infuriating, painful, and surreal. You will be working tired, texting with shaking hands, possibly crying in the car. It’s easy to get spun up past the point of being useful to anybody. Check in on people you’re closest to—including yourself. Eat a vegetable, stretch your hamstrings, maybe get together with the crew for a few small beers.

This will be the rule that is most impossible to follow. 

[system-architect]

just a quick doodle but i'm manifesting someone, anyone for VoE...