#sixth-light

[psycorax]

Since on Tumblr there’s no point in pandering to the algorithm, and I might as well do exactly what I like, I give you: a scene from a five-year-old oneshot in a tiny fandom. Well. The fic - “The Next Best Thing” - is one of my favorites, as is all Sixthlight’s Rivers of London fic really, and @sixth-light , I hope you don’t mind me using it for kissing practice.

[godihatethisfreakingcat]

idk if this is who lucie was talking about w/ friends on twitter. but one of len's white friends is saying it's a lie and ppl that talk about len+her friends like u all are acting like the alt right.

https:// twitter dot com/sixthlight/status/1427389459536891904

https:// twitter dot com/sixthlight/status/1427447357461864449

https:// twitter dot com/sixthlight/status/1427456480035315737

https:// twitter dot com/sixthlight/status/1427458175440101377

https:// twitter dot com/sixthlight/status/1427458363076407296

Uh. So, um. Assuming you're referring to this post? I'm just...

First of all, seeing that:

I guess THIS is where these despicable people have been hiding instead of showing their Tumblr followers their true feelings like adults.

I also guess that I must be behind on current slang, because maybe "political opinions I'm not copacetic with" is code for "denying the existence of genocides because they don't gel with someone's virtual boner for dictators, harassing people over these opinions, and generally acting like a terrible human being." Maybe there's a chance it is not, in fact, weasel language for "I'm sweeping the terrible reality of my friend's political views under the rug so I can pretend she's the wronged party here like the fucking narcissist's prayer."

For the thousandth time since I learned what the fuck was going on behind the scenes of this fandom: ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS???????

Guess what, server denizens? No one is demanding that anyone who ever touched the fandom denounce her - everyone’s just wondering why YOU, who helped make her into the unbridled fandom pseudo-authority and horrific bully she is and are now all Pretending You Do Not See It on Tumblr, refuse to do it! Clearly none of these people even read the original callout post after the first word. @starlightervarda, are you seeing this?

How DARE you compare the justified outrage of the people she hurt at best and terrorized at worst to the tactics of MOTHERFUCKING NEO-NAZIS. Do you even hear yourself? You are defending a liar, a brownfacer, a tankie, a VICIOUS FUCKING BULLY who may teeeeeechnically be a person of color by YOUR lily-white standards, but who STILL. FUCKING. LIED. For years and years and years. Who fucking hurt people for fun. For years and years and years. Who doubled the amount of non-white ancestry she actually has. For years and - you get my point.

I'm utterly disgusted at the depths to which one Blanche Marie Antoinette Anglo-Saxon Fromage McWhiteypants will sink to defend another one. This fandom is too good for these people. RADIATION SICKNESS is too good for these people. (Okay, yes, disclaimer that that's an exaggeration and I don't wish it on anyone. Sometimes a girl’s just gotta vent.)

[bedlamsbard]

sixth-light replied to your post “sixth-light replied to your post “bedlamsbard: that’s PhD CANDIDATE...”

although I will be honest: defences are basically a chance to celebrate getting your PhD. advisers don't let you do them unless you're gonna pass. so I can see why a department might ditch them, but...still a weird outlier, in an academic-cultural sense.

Yeah, I haven’t heard of another institution that does it this way! and even the other departments within my university do dissertation defenses. (not sure if they also do prospectus defenses or not.)

[angualupin]

sixth-light replied to your post “sorry guys i had to take a break after the whole suckling pig thing...”

I looked it up because I too did not know and it's not even for making hamburgers???? the name is a LIE????? I have never been so betrayed

no, you like... add the hamburger. ground beef. you add ground beef, which is what hamburger is made out of. and then you get... something that is not hamburger.

look, i’m a little unclear on the details. all i know is that it involves ground beef and most people think it is not very good, but it is cheap and fast, which is pretty much the opposite of the one hour fifteen minute recipe entitled ‘homemade hamburger helper’ featured on the New York Times

[beatrice-otter]

sixth-light

  Canonically, Harley Quinn was a very good...

“women can be world experts in a thing by the time they’re 25 as long as they’re hot” has been a movie cliche thing for…about forever. see also Bruce Banner having 7 PhDs, which actual academics find hilarious. Hollywood writers just don’t know how research and academia work.

Well, yes.

[phosphorescent-naidheachd]

@sixth-light replied to your post:

Surprisingly, I bought the redemption arc a lot more than you did (except for the kissing). But largely due to the quality of the acting, not the script. And the OT3/main trio stuff was out of nowhere but whatever, so is everything else in this trilogy, I’ll take what I can get. Mostly it made me long for a ST that took these excellent actors and gave them coherent arcs.

I’m glad it worked for you! And to be fair, it may work for me more on a rewatch. It’s less that I didn’t buy it (Kylo/Ben has been visibly conflicted throughout the entirety of this trilogy, after all), and more that it just didn’t feel like a fully-realized or earned arc to me. 

*nods* The actors absolutely did their best with what they were given. Which is pretty typical for a SW film of any era, tbh... SW has its strengths, but the quality of its scripts isn’t generally one of them. :-P

Yep, that was my feeling too. The trio stuff was out of nowhere, but no more so than pretty much everything else. And completely agreed---coherent arcs would have made a huge difference in the quality of these films. Oh well, I suppose that’s what we have fanfiction for.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

more about bedmaids and ladies-in-waiting

@sixth-light replied to your post “hi! I just went on to Elinor Tyrell’s asoiaf page and it describes her as being Margaery’s ‘pillow friend’...”

IIRC, sharing beds with same-gender companions was very common and unexceptionable back when beds were very expensive items of furniture, at all levels of society.

That is true, for both men and women, not just because of expensive beds and housing, but also prior to the guaranteed warmth of central heating. (Which isn’t to say that some of these bed-sharers didn’t have same-sex relationships, but nevertheless most were platonic.)

@lizzierh replied:

Here, I am influenced by my studying of Much Ado about Nothing where Beatrice and Hero (cousins) are referred to as “bedfellows”. (4.1). Here, Hero is the lord’s daughter and Beatrice the more minor cousin whose prominence as her uncle’s ward is increased through her relationship and closeness to her cousin.

Elinor, by being close in age with Margaery, can use this closeness to make a match at court in exchange for providing evidence of her lady’s chastity in the event of scandal, something both Elinor and Beatrice cannot do in the end.

Ah yes, and GRRM is often inspired by Shakespeare’s depictions of history more than by history itself, so this is very probably a deliberate parallel. “Bedfellow” is frequently used in Shakespeare (notably “strange bedfellows”, from The Tempest)... does it predate him? Yes, my OED dates it to 1478.

But did ladies-in-waiting ever serve as bedfellows? I was under the impression that they often shared a room with their mistress, but not a bed... but a quick google check tells me that Mary, Queen of Scots, had a cousin and lady-in-waiting, Mary Fleming, who she took as her bedfellow when she was too nervous to sleep alone. Queen Elizabeth I also had several bedfellows:

In her Bedchamber, Elizabeth could de-robe, take off her make-up and withdraw from the hustle-bustle of the court. Here she was waited upon by her ladies who had the most intimate access to the Queen, attending on her as she dressed, ate, bathed, toileted and slept. Elizabeth was never alone and in or adjacent to her bed she also had a sleeping companion – a trusted bedfellow – with whom she might gossip, share dreams and nightmares, and seek counsel. [...] Sharing a bed with a sleeping companion of the same sex was a common practice at the time, providing warmth, comfort and security; but being the Queen of England's bedfellow was a position of the greatest trust, bringing close and intimate access to Elizabeth.

--Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court

So yes, GRRM is definitely basing Margaery’s, Cersei’s, and other Westeros noblewomen’s “bedmaids” on an established role for ladies-in-waiting from our world. Glad that’s settled. :)

[lazulus]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch Author: Sixthlight Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Peter Grant/Thomas Nightingale Characters: Peter Grant, Thomas Nightingale, Cecelia Tyburn Thames, Abigail Kamara, Original Characters Summary:

Fifteen years after a headless body was discovered in Covent Garden, Thomas Nightingale is still the last wizard in Britain, and Peter Grant, newly appointed Commander for Community Engagement in the Metropolitan Police Service, has just learned the truth about the existence of the Folly.

He has one or two questions.

Thank you to Sixthlight for giving blanket permission to produce remixes/sequels/podfic/fanart/translations based on their work, it really makes life easier for podficcers.

I’ve not recorded any podfic for nearly a year and so, to get back into the swing of it, I decided to add to the small but perfectly formed selection available in the tiny fandom of Rivers of London. For anyone who has not read the books this will probably make little sense, but I love the books and really enjoy Sixthlight’s stories, so here we are.