just a twink

Gay Chaos

[anxietyproblem]

[zero-two-ten]

this site has one setting

[jenroses]

I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record.  And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.” So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)

It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons. 

[kittydorkling]

There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:

The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.

You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!

But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.

[bogleech]

You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking

[literary-squagon-deactivated202]

My dad calls it, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.”

[fierceawakening]

Productive dissociation? Thank you.

I remember telling people years ago “I think there’s got to be something positive about this or we wouldn’t do it when in profound distress” and basically being told I was in denial about how much my mental illness affected me. Drove me batty.

Thanks.

[bread-tab]

Well, people hear the phrase “maladaptive coping mechanism” and translate it to “bad coping mechanism.” But the keyword here is adaptive. The line between adaptive and maladaptive is very thin. It’s not about the coping mechanism itself, it’s about whether it still fits your current circumstances.

Over-relying on one skill does not mean you’re bad at skills. It just means you need to learn a couple more of them.

[pixelartpeach]

Cheat Code #3 for accommodating disabled characters in sci-fi/fantasy:

If you want your setting to be accommodating, change the environment more than the person.

i.e.: On a worldbuilding level, if you want to portray a society that keeps disabled people in mind, then that needs to be reflected more broadly, even without your disabled character on screen. Because this means that your society was considering disabled people as part of itself when it was figuring out what's necessary.

If your computer takes voice commands, it should also have an optional keyboard in case someone can't speak.

If your magic school has multiple floors, it should have a teleporting rune circle for those that can't take the ever-changing stairs.

Whenever you have a feature you're adding, ask yourself—"If my character couldn't use this, what would they do instead?" And if the answer is "they'd have to wait until they could" or "they need someone else to use it for them," then your setting isn't accommodating. An accommodating setting always has an actionable answer to that question.

And as a bonus, if you follow through with it, oftentimes you'll end up with a more interesting world and story overall. Spells most people can speak can be written in ancient elven instead? That means you can have a character sneak a spell into a magic-banned city by writing it on their hair ribbon, and that it's possible that a book might be a self-generating spell on its own. Your spaceship has textured lines on the walls to let blind people navigate without guidance? Not only can you make it look artistic (different colored paints, glowing patterns), but now your engineer can make it to the warp core when the power's out and oxygen's finite.

Don't limit yourself just to what's needed in the moment. Figure out interesting alternatives to your setting's features, and your world will automatically feel more alive.

Cheat Code 1: How to avoid eliminating disability in your setting

Cheat Code 2: What kinds of aid to use to accommodate disability

Cheat Code 4: How to personalize your character's disability aid

[pixelartpeach]

Cheat Code #2 for accommodating disabled characters in sci-fi/fantasy:

How you aid a disability depends on if it's a new development or had always existed.

i.e.: If someone's lost their legs to a griffin biting them off last week, giving them steampunk prosthetic legs is a good aid. There's something they can't do, that they very recently could, that they need to learn to work around. The prosthetic legs still need an adjustment period to learn how to use them, but your character knows how legs should work and can figure it out more easily.

If someone lost their legs because, as a child, they wandered away from the space field trip and got partially eaten by a carnivorous plant, then it depends. Prosthetic legs can technically work, but the longer the character was without legs, the harder it'll be to re-learn how to use them. You might want to go with bionic legs for short distances, but a hover chair for daily use.

If someone was born without legs, then prosthetic legs are more hindrance than they're worth. Your character has never had legs, and has no idea how they're supposed to work.

Imagine if you're in a world of centaurs; you're given prosthetic hind legs, and now expected to be able to climb up cliffs with the grace of a mountain goat. It's a whole new skill you'd have to learn, and you would get annoyed with it very fast; how are they supposed to sync with the legs you already have? How are you supposed to balance? You can't feel anything, you don't know how much space it occupies.

Someone who's always been disabled doesn't need the thing they were born without, they need aid that lets them do what everyone else can in a way they're familiar with. If your character has always been deaf, glasses with subtitles appearing on them are infinitely more useful than aids that let them hear, because hearing when you've always had silence is going to have a steep learning curve and be ridiculously overwhelming.

Your rule of thumb?

Try to give them something they're used to.

Note: This is different with very small children, because they're already learning how to use every part of them. If a toddler in your sci-fi was born without legs, they can be taught to use bionic legs at a very young age, but it has to start early or it'll run into the problems above.

Cheat code 1: How to avoid eliminating disability in your setting

Cheat Code 3: How to make your setting itself disability-friendly

Cheat Code 4: How to personalize your character's disability aid

[pixelartpeach]

Cheat code for writing disabled characters in sci-fi/fantasy without eliminating their disability:

Don't change humanity, change what's available to humanity.

i.e.: If your magic removes/fixes a defect or your sci-fi lets you select for traits at birth, that's changing humanity. That's altering a fundamental aspect that real humans live with, and distancing your fictional version of humanity from the real deal by cutting out a portion of it that your setting deems "undesirable."

If your magic/sci-fi aids a defect (like magic netting that acts as a brace, or a wheelchair with wheels that transform to fit the environment), then you're taking humanity as we know it and saying "wouldn't it be cool if we had these tools?"

Don't change what makes us human, change what humans can create.

Cheat Code 2: What kinds of aid to use to accommodate disability

Cheat Code 3: How to make your setting itself disability-friendly

Cheat Code 4: How to personalize your character's disability aid

[bleuisghost]

I decided to share this around Tumblr, as well

[ida-backwards-intherain]

#from an art perspective it's also a great use of space and tone#i love the choice of color between soft blue and stark red#the emptiness of the white side of the bg next to the soft blue invoking a feeling that resonates with the subject#this is an excellent piece of art

[kaijuno]

Wait this is funny

[red-faced-wolf-deactivated20251]

This humor is so fucking advanced yet so fucking simple at the same time

[sarahmascarah]

[kaged-heart]

Ok, but this illustrates perfectly how school is designed to teach us how to work.

[queeranarchism]

^^^ yes. Children shouldn’t have to live like this either. It fucking sucks.

[mioxenoblade]

Captions shouldn't be censored. If the video says fuck or cum or cunt the captions should say the fucking word.

[dancing-jestress]

Unless it's a slur! No one needs to see that.

[mioxenoblade]

If they say a slur in the video, the captions should reflect it. The disabled are not little babies who have to have life sanitized for them.

[sunbummonkey]

okay but I feel like ur forgetting that slurs don't just apply to the disabled... children don't need to be seeing the n-word or other racial slurs??

[mioxenoblade]

but children DO need to be hearing it? are you actually reading the post here?

[pixelartpeach]

Here's how it works when subtitles are done properly:

Audio: Let's BEEP go! Subtitle: Let's (censor tone) go!

Audio: Let's fucking go! Subtitle: Let's fucking go!

Removing swears and slurs from the subtitles without removing it from the audio is implying that deaf/HoH people need babying, unlike their hearing friends and family sitting right next to them. Which is frustrating.

The point of subtitles is to give the same experience to everyone watching, regardless of ability—not to be a more palatable version of what's being said.

[iapislazuli]

idk what traumatized or mentally ill person needs to hear this but dreams (especially the really disturbing ones you dont want to talk about to anybody) arent some deep peek into your psyche or a sign of your True Desires or whatever theyre quite literally your brain making fruit salad with whatever it can find on the shelf. just putting all that shit in a blender and hitting obliterate. its fine, youre fine, youre not a weirdo for it

[iapislazuli]

Actually forget what I said. This dream is more important than anything

[genderkoolaid]

psa for cis people: it's not "women and people who menstruate," it's just people who menstruate. adding "women and" implies that

the only relevant women are (menstruating) cis women, so there's no need to add any qualifiers (like "cis")

womanhood is central to menstruation & menstruation is central to womanhood by unnecessarily bringing up gender right before using a gender neutral phrase

just say people who menstruate. women who menstruate are people. saying "women and people who menstruate" is a nonsense phrase that only serves to soothe the egos of cis women. they can cope with not having their ciswomanhood centered, I promise.

[girlbossgaslightguillermo]

Also if you think that’s “too long”, sometimes you can just say people and the context implies that you’re talking about people who menstruate. A sentence like “people who menstruate should have better access to menstrual hygiene products” and “people should have better access to menstrual hygiene products” mean the same thing. “women with period cramps are so brave” and “people with period cramps are so brave” is another example. just using people in thag context makes it clear you mean people who menstruate.

Also fuck the weird trend of saying women, trans men and femmes to talk about people who menstruate. Or AFAB people. Not all AFABs menstruate not all women or trans men menstruate. And femmes has absolutely nothing to do with menstruation. It’s so baffling thag people genuinely think this is inclusive language.

[micro-usb-deactivated20230625]

[disast3rtransp0rt]

As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.

Both options are great.

Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their 'You're Too Emotionally Immature To Understand' cannon.

What they aren't expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:

Are you okay?

That's not the kind of language I was raised to use with others.

Do you need a moment to think on why that wasn't acceptable?

This is no way to engage in intelligent conversation. Please try that again in a kinder tone if you'd like this to continue. (I really like this one because it lets you turn their public-shame rhetoric around)

For those of you who'd are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:

What's happening in your life to cause you this much anger? I can't imagine hurting so badly that I need to hurt other people.

Who taught you it was acceptable to treat other people this way? Certainly not the Jesus I remember.

Whatever happened to 'judge not lest ye be judged'?

If I talked like that in front of my parents or grandparents I would be ashamed.

I think there's something you need to pray on before we try and have this conversation.

And my all time favorite:

"It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart."

(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)

TLDR: It's much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren't expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don't get angry, get spitefully polite! :)

[themythicalcodfish]

I once witnessed a very soft-spoken young Southern man take a hateful older woman’s hands gently in his and say “Sister, I am so sorry that the Devil has carved a home for hatred in your heart. I’ll pray for you.”

It was glorious.

[1863-project]

This works with all sorts of inappropriate behavior. I work as the archivist in a public library, so I end up on the reference desk a lot, and sometimes patrons will say or do things that aren't exactly appropriate. When patrons try to hit on me, I put on a teacher voice and calmly ask, "Is that an appropriate question to ask someone at work?" and it shuts them down immediately.

This sort of thing always does the trick.

[primsycoldbottles]

um . warning now that tumblr is allowing gif pfps . PLEASE dont use gifs with flashing or eyestraining colours <3 since the gifs Cannot be turned off it WILL negatively affect photosensitive people

[justepilepsy]

Hey, uhm... @staff

Can we please get a working disable autoplay for these on all devices. Mobile AND DESKTOP?

It's disability pride month. Pretty please.

[haikyuupaladin]

I’ve seen a lot of people in the tags and comments celebrating that gif profile pics are a thing. And while I acknowledge that it’s fun for a lot of people, celebrating on this post is missing the point of this post which is that Tumblr has added a feature that endangers photosensitive users as this new feature bypasses the disable autoplay function on mobile. If you’re going to use this new function please be careful with what gifs you use but also please be aware of how celebrating on this post specifically, which is warning about the dangers of this feature, can come across to people who are affected by this

[animentality]

[athelind]

Fuck Around and Find Out

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

[trollprincess]

We have regular doors on either side of revolving doors because 492 people died at the Cocoanut Grove in 1942. We have radar for air traffic control and the Federal Aviation Administration because two planes collided over the Grand Canyon in 1956. Natural gas smells like that because it didn’t before it blew up the New London school in 1937 and killed around 300 people. We have a LOT of fire safety rules because of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. We have stronger cockpit doors because of 9/11 and stronger security for employees because of Pacific Southwest Flight 1771 and lighted aisles on planes because of Air Canada Flight 797.

I mean, that’s just off the top of my head after getting home from working twelve hours overnight. Two hundred and twelve episodes of @disasterarea-podcast, and nearly all of them involved the disaster in question spawning new regulations or rules to prevent the same thing from happening again.

[roach-works]

actually i’d like to point out: we have safety regulations because people PROTESTED AND FOUGHT AND STRUCK AND DEMONSTRATED AND RAISED HELL. it took the bereaved families of those who died in the triangle shirtwaist factory years of campaigning for the government to pass regulations about fire and door locks. it took open warfare--the government was sending in troops, dropping bombs-- for miners in appalachia to get basic safety regulations. it takes parent groups and boycots and unions fighting cops in the street. it takes marches on washington. it takes a lot of journalism.

the government does nothing for the silent dead, the humble dead, the polite dead. a dead body is shoveled into the ground and forgotten by the next business quarter.

safety regulations are not written in the blood of silent, disposable victims. they’re written in the blood of those who split their knuckles and screamed their throats raw for a better world.

don’t ever underestimate the value of protest.

[crazysodomite]

im kind of obsessed with this graphic.

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

Medievalists of Tumblr: what inaccuracies annoy you the most in movies set in the Middle Ages?

Mine is probably the ‘everyone was constantly caked in mud and only wore grey and brown’ aesthetic.

[mediaeval-muse]

Same. Also the idea that “women were property so they did nothing but sew and have babies and the time was inherently backwards and violent”

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

the complete absence of christianity from pop culture perceptions of the medieval period really bugs me (or it being relegated to the fringes and a few monks somewhere)

like… this was a major part of most people’s daily lives even if it didn’t necessarily look like christianity as we know it. also medieval theology is fucking wild! where are all the debates about cannibal babies in pop culture medieval stuff? WHERE is the twelfth century werewolf renaissance? the fuckign infancy gospels?? give me weird medieval theology you cowards

[cukibola-deactivated20200917]

A lot of them had already been mentioned, so may I add

“The dishes were only bland soups and maybe some moldy bread”

I’m studying English language and literature, not History, but like… Pork vs Pig… Deer vs Venison… Cow vs Beef… May give you the idea THEY FUCKING ATE MEAT AT LEAST GODDAMIT

And not even like we do

Where’s the feast with venison? The ridiculous amount of salmon and other fishes? The little gardens full of spices? Or the trade of exotic foods? Slaughtering season was celebrated in some places not that much ago (like… I saw one when little), why not portray one?

And more importantly

WHERE’S THE CHICKEN WITH HELMET???

GIVE ME CHICKEN WITH HELMET OR GIVE ME DEATH

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

Yeah, and for better or for worse they were much less picky about which animals they ate than we are. Porpoise, anyone?

Medieval people loved their spices; The Forme of Cury has a lot of flavours I’d associate more with Indian food than anything else. Even if you weren’t a wealthy seasoning-loving king like Richard II, you could still have garlic, onions, and herbs.

Also please link me a picture of the chicken with helmet if you can, I need to see this.

[cukibola-deactivated20200917]

Here it is

Here’s a link with more info. Apparently the dish is called Singing Chicken… But that’s a chicken with a helmet

Top 12 weirdest Medieval food

In Medieval times, food was medicine, religion and status. And in Medieval feasts, an art-form The Medieval poor mostly ate pottage - basic

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.

[elfwreck]

Hollywood has a tendency to portray the past as “just like today, minus whatever of today’s things we know they didn’t have.” There’s no concept that the past had things that today doesn’t.

Like bawdy medicinal tips.

[akashic-gleek]

@candiceirae

[candiceirae]

The idea that people used spices to cover spoiled meat is similarly stupid and utterly infuriating.

And yes, the gaping absence of religion from depictions of the Middle Ages is jarring.

[sca-nerd]

All of this, but mostly that they existed in a sepia toned world with no color, pattern, or texture.

[crows-n-cats]

Going off the colors of textiles, the assumption that their textiles were always crude and rough compared to today’s. Think of the twills and brocades! The cloth of gold! The silks, and the wool so gauzy you could see through it! The soft wool clothing! The quality and variety of fabric we have available has plummetted since the industrial revolution.

[brunhiddensmusings]

beyond conventional spices the medieval cook and especially the resourceful housewife would have been exploiting herbs by the fistfull on a level we today cannot comprehend, like we dont even know what some of the names of herbs they used even mean anymore and they grew them like suburban homeowners today grow ugly border hedges. whatever soups they had access to had a decent chance of being something that would be 100% locally grown and every bit as flavorful as any regonal dish today withiout having to resort to saying ‘well they could possibly have been eating curry’ instead of giving them a flavor identity of their own. just because ‘spice’ isnt readily available dont assume ‘flavor’ is out of reach, the aromatics they used would be on par with the modern french concept of mirepoix but, moving past the kitchen the two things that irk me are that everyone toiled miserably and everything was grey stone, rudely carved buildings, shoddy construction unadorned well yeah, if you went to a decrepit ruin thats been abandoned for centuries it would look like that, but not when people lived there! you see the shows and movies and sweet baby cheese the kings residence looks like a dank basement and sometimes he doesnt even have a change of clothes when castles were in use they were prominent displays of power and wealth, whitewashed so that even small amounts of light reflected well inside them so that they illuminated well, paintings and murals in a riot of colors and displaying personal tastes, tapestries that may be the local lords wife, aunt, or grandmothers gift to them as tappestry making was a popular hobby at court where women gathered to gossip and giggle while making vibrantly colored decorations that are usually dismissed because the only ones that survive had endured about 500 years of sun damage, smoke damage, and uncertain cleaning history

that clearly showed the people of the time valued color, had style, and only occasionally made horses look like a dog made out of play-doh. even people who didnt live in a castle still had access to paint to liven up the plaster walls of their homes, brightly dyed fabrics and flowers were as available to them as and they sang, constantly. what we assume was a life of toiling in the mud from dusk till dawn the whole year was typically a relaxed paced life of 10 hour a night sleep in a comfortable bed where work didnt start untill you had your flagon of ale and a song with your buddies as you walked to the field, you sang as you worked, took three ale breaks from work while singing, and then you sang as you walked to the tavern so you could sing while you played nine mens morris or cheated at mancala because you thought the miller was too soused to notice. we barely know any of the songs they sang and humanity is less for it, a scant handfull of them do remain and its just beautiful to hear what a table of tavern patrons would break into song about to prove they werent too drunk for another round song and story were all day every day, theres a reason the most well known middle english text was canterbury tales- whose narrative was that a selection of travelers on the way to the same location had an ongoing bar-bet about who could tell the better story, asking bartenders to judge the complexity of these stories, all of which were absolutely valid as just shit you would say to another drunk in a tavern, would give modern soap operas a swift kick in the pants and its sad that it takes a historian to tell you just how crass and lowbrow humor they were on a similar vein to how so many people somehow forgot that shakespear was lowbrow humor for the commoner and not somehow too sophisticated for rubes it wasnt just bards who would own an instrument, instruments are wood, leather, string, bone/horn, or even clay… those are all commonly available and affordable if not straight up FREE items to someone in the medieval world so a hefty chunk of the population would have an instrument and know how to use it, anything from a wood flute to a simple drum to an ocarina. many designs were even specifically for travel so you could always have it at the ready

how about this- in all the versions of robin hood i have -EVER- seen the most historically accurate any of them got was the scene in kevin costner ‘king of theves’ where friar tuck was singing to himself while on the road ‘women wine and whoring’. not just because its one of the only times in any medieval period movie ive seen someone singing to pass the time in the mind-numbing hours of traveling before the invention of the car radio, but ALSO because they based the tune he sings off the classic ‘ Bache Benne Venies’, the oldest known drinking song we still know the words and tune of and let me tell you that song slaps talk to me about historical accuracy in movies and ill tell you that tolkein writing hobbit songs for walking, drinking, or describing what an elephant was was more historically accurate then all of GOT passed through a sieve to collect every grain of stray element of medievalness gaily dressed hobbits full of pie, sitting in a well decorated room full of beautiful hand carved furniture, on their fifth ale, and singing about the man in the moon getting shitfaced is about ten times historically accurate as most anything else i can think of if you ignored the historical accuracy of them being hobbits

[lloerwyn-deactivated20201104]

To be clear, when I say ‘like Indian food’, I’m not generalising or trying to deny them their own flavour profile, I’m talking about how Forme of Cury uses things like cardamom, ginger, and pepper that I’ve also had in curry or kheer. I’m just comparing it to the closest thing I’ve eaten, not saying the two are the same. My voice teacher did once make me a medieval French bean dish with duck and smoked bacon, and it was excellent.

But yeah, I know that some people get exasperated by the number of songs that Tolkien has in his books, but I really think it completes the world. It makes it feel fleshed out and more enjoyable and individual in its own right but also ties it to history. Singing is such an accessible pastime and I really don’t think people in fantasy do enough of it. (And as a bonus, Tolkien also gives us some Middle-earth lore in his lyrics. Which is great for the reader and also reflects how important an oral information-sharing tradition is within the world itself.)

I will say that even though I’m not a fan of many of the creative choices made in GoT, I can understand GRRM making his world in ASoIaF a bleaker place than is realistic because part of the whole thing of low fantasy is The World Is Shitty. I’ve heard people say that Dunk and Egg is a less depressing story and it’s more of just a fun knight adventure. I’d like to read it. I definitely enjoyed ASoIaF, but it’s just so heavy sometimes. As for GoT, I never finished it.

[apocryphalia]

Ok so I cannot speak to the accuracy of everything here, but let me tell you a little bit about textiles because (obviously this is news to everyone) I Love Them.

I studied late antique textiles in undergrad. Late antiquity is a weird period with multiple different scholarly definitions, but the gist is that it’s the transition period between the ancient and medieval worlds. Christianity was a thing, but people were also still heavily influenced by older stories/mythologies/religions (the vast majority of textiles that survive from this period come from Egypt because of the climate, so in this case it’s Greek and Roman traditions that still hold influence).

Anyway. The textiles from this weird nebulous period of history are straight-up gorgeous, and not just to a nerd of my particular type. Take a look at Dumbarton Oaks or the Met’s collections and come tell me that ancient/medieval hand-woven textiles were all rough and poorly made. And you know why people spent so many hours making these beautiful things painstakingly by hand? (Every single step of the process, by the way - shearing, carding, spinning, dying, all before you get to the actual weaving. This stuff was incredibly skilled, intensive labor.) They did it because textiles were incredibly important. We don’t think much of them now that they can be mass-produced, but there was a whole Thing with the Virgin Mary spinning and metaphors about her weaving Christ on a loom, and textiles were used for protective magic, and they were part of everything important in people’s lives.

There were dyes that were prohibitively expensive, yes - Tyrian purple is literally still so expensive that we couldn’t buy a big enough sample to test our actual antique textiles against effectively. In the Byzantine Empire, it was controlled exclusively by the imperial family - hence the whole royal purple thing. But guess what? There are so many purple textiles, because people used other things! Madder and indigo! Both affordable! Mix them together and you get a very pretty color. Change up the mordants you use to seal the dyes and you can get a whole range of different colors out of one plant!

And people took these things and they wove them into literal artwork and wore it around on their clothes. They had hangings on their walls for decoration, sure (and also insulation and noise control), but they also had curtains! Textiles separated rooms the way wooden doors do now! The reason I have a weird thing for liminal spaces is because textiles were associated with them, and they were given power. The hanging in your doorway could protect your home from misfortune. Protective symbols around the neck and sleeves of your tunic could keep you from getting ill. And all of these things were pretty and colorful and painstakingly crafted by laypeople and professionals alike, and they were everywhere.

Basically, the ancient and medieval worlds were alive and full of color and magic. Not gray stone and plain cloth and misery.

And also textiles are important and you should love them.

[apocryphalia]

ALSO this is what Roman socks looked like, and aren’t they adorable!

(This particular one is a child’s sock and it’s from the Royal Ontario Museum. A lot of other examples are red, possibly because red was a protective color - it’s also more common in surviving children’s items, likely because of high infant mortality and a need for extra protection for kids. Red was also common as a border color around sleeves and necklines and such - this is the liminal spaces thing I was squealing about!)

[prismatic-bell]

OKAY ALSO

“They were unwashed”

Entirely incorrect.

At a MINIMUM, your average Christian peasant would have bathed once a week, to be clean for church, and they likely bathed more frequently than that, including a decent rinsedown of face/hands/pits daily. Jews and Muslims would have bathed daily due to ritual bathing, and Christian peasants would have washed their hands before meals to clear away whatever physical remains of their work might taint the food (field dirt, sheep smell from yarn, etc. and so forth). No, they didn’t wash their hair with soap (the soap available at the time wouldn’t really…work…on hair), BUT: hair was covered for the most part, and combed out daily, which distributed the oils evenly and removed dead skin from the scalp. Their hair didn’t smell all fruity like we’re used to in the modern era of perfumed everything, but it was in fact cleaned and cared for.

ALSO WHERE ARE ALL THE FUCKING BLACK PEOPLE

The earliest known record of a Black person in England is from the 800s and he was “an African” who was an assistant to a monk named Bede. I haven’t been able to track down the dude’s actual name, but he could read and write in several languages, which is an achievement in any era but especially one where schooling was patchy and varied. Black people were in Western Europe, and for a very long time they were treated the same as their light-skinned counterparts. Sorry not sorry, get over it.

[pure]

On a basic conceptual level our society doesn’t want women to know that lesbianism is even a possibility. It’s seen as a threat when women assert their lesbianism, but love between women is fundamentally trivialized and the intention is to make it appear that way so that aforementioned threat never arises. I remember when I told my mama I was a homo the first thing she said was “It’s normal to think women are pretty” and “I love my female friends” in an attempt to trivialize my love for women. It was only until I asserted myself as being very much romantically involved with women in a way that was incompatible with heterosexuality that she broke out into hysterics lol. It makes me wonder how many women are living unhappy lives because lesbianism is abstracted and isolated so far away from women as a mere conceptual reality.

[pengychan]

My brother's girlfriend had HPV, so he went to get himself the HPV vaccine. There is a fee to pay (nothing much, something like €87) but it's completely free if you're in one of the "at risk" groups.

"What does that mean," he asks. "It's free if you're gay," he's told. "Ah. Would I have to like, prove it, or...?" "Just put in a check mark here."

My brother is in no way, shape or form attracted to men, but also he's stingy as it gets. So now he's officially gay. Congrats bro.

[pengychan]

"Doctor, give it to me straight" "You sure, there's a fee" "… Give it to me gay"

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

AGAB (Assigned Gay At Billing)

[battlships]

Fascinated by the fact that his first question was about if he'd have to prove it. I wanna know how far that man would go to save less than a dollar

[saintsideways]

Sorry, do you think 87 euros is less than a dollar

[fieldbears]