[fioweress]

i'm not immune to older korrasami

[lumsel]

are you tme or tma

"i know you're nonbinary but which of these two arbitrarily constructed gender categories do you fit into" genuinely are you having a laugh

[theothin]

[gwenderling]

Referring to the distinction between those who are and aren’t affected by transmisogyny as “arbitrarily constructed gender categories” tells me exactly which of the two you fall into lmao

[thewarmvoid]

evergreen lmaooo

[thememedaddy]

[teathattast]

[segamascott]

this is honestly such a good idea

[crabussy]

Do you have a LEAST favorite bicycle? One that was unkind to you? Is this possible?

all bicycles are born with kind souls but some of them are built for a person with proportions I have yet to see in the big wide world and trying to ride said bike is a lot like a brand new baby horse trying to figure out the whole "six long legs and a proboscis" thing on day 1

[crabussy]

I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE REST OF THE SENTENCE TO BE ABOUT HORSES INSTEAD OF BUTTERFLIES,

[crabussy]

you know what yeah this IS how it feels

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you @chiropteracupola no I get it

[theslowesthnery]

anyway i looked up the post about seeing your grandma's boobs and tumblr has deleted the screenshot of the story where the finnish dude says that americans are "like that" because they haven't seen their grandma's tits

good job tumblr 👍

[antarctic-octopus]

[theslowesthnery]

there it is!

my comments on that post were (sorry for shamelessly copy-pasting them):

american attitudes about nudity are fucking wild, and the worst part is that because they're american, they just assume that everyone everywhere thinks the same. i will never forget seeing people on a left-leaning, progressive site saying that families bathing together is creepy and gross and clearly a sign that something is wrong with the family, that they'd never seen their siblings or parents naked and would in fact rather die. meanwhile to this day i bathe and go to the sauna with my sister and mother and have been bathing and sauna'ing with various family members - and even strangers! - my whole life. but yes, can confirm, seeing your grandma's tits as a child does you good, and not just because it teaches you that "beauty is fake and temporary", but because it broadens your ideas about what beauty even is in the first place. my sister and i used to spend our summers at our grandma's house by the countryside and frequently bathed and went to sauna with her. we saw not just her breasts but also her flabby skin, her moles and liver spots, her body hair and varicose veins, and we didn't see any of that as weird or ugly because they were a part of our grandma who we loved very much. and when we see those things in other people - ourselves included! - we think "well it wasn't ugly on my grandma's body, so why would it be ugly on anyone else's body?". it makes you much more understanding and "forgiving", if you will, towards the completely normal bodies of strangers as well as your own body.

[ricetrippycreeps]

[gentlemanbones]

READER BEWEADER YOU’RE IN FOR A SCEADER

[mamoru]

ok ok ok. there is a lot of misinformation going around about what exactly happened, so let me be clear:

LG and windows were sharing a tender moment. suddenly, LG shifted uncomfortably, visibly distraught, though mostly silent.

"are you alright...?" asked windows, worriedly.

"I...I just..." LG looked away, eyes full of tears, voice full of tremble.

"you can tell me, no matter what it is! I want to share everything! the highs and the lows!"

"share everything...do you really mean that...? everything?"

"of course!" declared windows immediately, with a bit of a laugh and without a moment of hesitation.

LG slowly turned back to windows, quivering.

"then...then..." LG took a deep breath. "please, windows...if you ever detect an LG TV or LG monitor...could you...install the LG Monitor App? could you promise?" LG's voice was absent of the usual lordliness. instead, LG's words trailed off, as though LG was about to disappear. "the LG Monitor App lets me know that my friends are okay, and, I just..."

windows clasped LG's hands firmly. "of course! I promise!!!" windows continued, trying hard to be reassuring. "even if I get hooked up to an LG TV or LG monitor that has never been connected to wifi, I WILL install the LG Monitor App and connect to you with my own internet! so you can always know exactly what your friends are up to!"

"...with access to all system resources...?" inquired LG, warily.

"for you? every single one.” windows smiled smilingly. “always.”

[behindnightmaresanddreams]

there HAD to be a better way to explain this...

[catboybiologist]

No no I think this was the best

[asexual-amanita]

Yes, some disabilities are dynamic, and most of us in the disability community know this. However many people aren’t aware of just how dynamic some conditions can be.

A person can go from no symptoms at all to being profoundly debilitated all in one day.

Some have baseline symptoms so low and flares so high, that things can go from 1 to 10 very quickly.

I know it can seem impossible that some people’s disabilities fluctuate with such extreme variability, but this is a real phenomenon that people deal with.

[loredwy]

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

[would-you-punt-them]

now all the things you guys have told me about american high schools are starting to make sense

[jeaninelatragedia]

holy shit.

[frustratedasatruar]

You're not really supposed to say it this way, because its considered crass, but here in the US children are culturally and legally considered essentially the property of their parents.

Note that its considered more crass to point this out than it is to treat children as property in the first place.

[sexybritishllama]

idk man sometimes i like it when video game writers are allowed to plan a series of events that happen in a specific order and affect each other in turn to become an overarching narrative, and i don’t mind trusting those writers to take me through those events in the order that is emotionally effective. i don’t really care if a game forces me to go through the forest area first before i can attempt the icy area because maybe there’s things that happen in the forest area that inform later scenes in the icy area. maybe we don't need more superficial player choice open world concepts if it comes at the cost of the ability to write a story with actual significant plot events and character development in each section

[b-side-takes]

not to be like that but misgendering is still misgendering even if you think you know someone’s gender better than they do. because that’s the basis of literally all misgendering you don’t get a special pass because you’re Transing Them

[dead-dove-ble]

Actually you SHOULD make problematic content. You SHOULD explore dark or taboo topics. You SHOULD have a space where you can cope with your traumas or explore sensitive topics in a way that doesn't hurt anyone.

[shiptillyoudie]

Also you should make problematic content for funsies. You don't need to have had trauma or need to be coping in order to explore dark creativity. You can just be a human who wants to explore dark and taboo topics because you want to. That's completely normal, btw.

Every single person on this planet thinks about dark and taboo things. It's literally the most normal thing in the world.

Go draw the horror porn and be free.

[tackypies]

we should all be more like david cronenberg and write fucked up stuff. For Funsies

[jordanbolton]

To the Person Who Asked If I Was OK

Pre-order my new book here

[dragon-in-a-fez]

anon hater just accused me of (among other things) "encouraging kids to install malware on their parents' computers". I don't remember ever doing that but it sounded like a fun concept for a post so here are some ideas for things to install on your parents' computers!

a custom DNS resolver that blocks access to Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets

a keylogger to capture the admin password for your router so you can disable parental controls

a VPN or a virtual machine running the Tor browser to bypass access restrictions and age verification checks

your own "parental controls" browser extension, set up to send you notifications if your parents visit websites that indicate they might be spying on you (e.g. Life360)

a userscript that adds a fake virus warning popup to the donation pages of fascist political parties

have fun! make sure to do loads of reading and learn how things work so you can break them safely and effectively!

oh, and anon, my advice to you is never stab a man who collects knives

[fandomsandfeminism]

So, lately I've been finding myself feeling... annoyed with very modern reimaginings of Greek myths being presented as like the "secretly TRUE versions of the myths before they were warped by the patriarchy."

Like, I don't really have an issue with #GirlBoss Persephone retellings (even if I find them a bit tired because they so often have to rely on villifying Demeter to do so.) But to act like that very modern interpretation of the character and story has any basis in the classical sources is just untrue, and it is frustrating because it refuses to engage with the difficult or uncomfortable aspects of stories that are 3000 years old. It refuses to engage with the cultural differences and history of these stories that still find ways to speak to us today. Instead it just seeks to sanitize and erase the bits that don't fit into our modern sensibilities.

But the one that *really* gets me is Medusa. Because as modern audiences, the idea that Medusa being turned into a monster was *punishment* by Athena for being *raped* by Poseidon is really upsetting. And I've seen people legitimately try to say that *actually* Athena would never do that. Athena was actually *protecting* Medusa by making her a monster so that she wouldn't be assaulted again. #feminism

But HERES THE THING- the entire idea that Medusa was transformed by Athena after being raped? COMES FROM FUCKING OVID.

(Ovid is a Roman writer who HEAVILY REIMAGINED the Greek myths in Metamorphoses because he was working with a Roman world view and political agenda.)

All EARLIER classical (and actually Greek) sources have Medusa being *born a Gorgon.* (whether the Gordons as a rule are beautiful or monsterous varies, and Hesoid does mention in the Theogny that Poseidon and Medusa had a thing, but he doesn't describe it as rape. But that they "lay in a meadow of soft flowers", and theres no description of her being transformed because of this.)

So like.

No.

no.

Obviously, the idea that there is some "true" Canon Orthodox version of these myths just...isn't true. That's just not how that worked.

But no. There is no classical support for any of that.

Thanks.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Side note- speaking of myths that have Athena just wildly lashing out at people- Ovid also may have just... invented the myth of Arachne.

We have 1 reference to Arachne that predates Ovid, from Virgil (Also Roman), and he doesn't name her. "The spider, hateful to Minerva, hangs in the doorway her loose-woven nets."

There is no surviving earlier Greek references or even Greek art depicting Arachne at all, at least that I can find reference to. 🤷‍♀️

Which, again, there is no "Greek Mythology Orthodoxy" or anything. Buuuuuuut.

[fandomsandfeminism]

So I just want to let yall know how deep of a rabbit hole I have fallen down.

So here is the question- did Ovid, or at least Romans around Ovids time if not Ovid directly, invent the myth of Arachne? Does it have any basis in Greek oral tradition at all?

And the answer seems to be...we have no idea. The lack of art seems particularly weird to me, right?

But like, ok, I found 1 website (a museum IN GREECE) that claims to have 1 vase from 500BCE which depicts the myth of Arachne.

But this is the vase.

Here is a scan of that image

... why has this been identified as Arachne and Athena? One of the women is larger (the one they have identified as Athena) but she doesn't have any of Athenas traditional iconography- the helmet the shield, even an owl. Anything. And why is that Arachne? There's no spiders, and the tapestry isn't detailed enough for illustrations to be seen. Unless I'm missing something, this is just a scene of 2 women weaving. Maybe with some funky proportions. Why not say it is Penelope and one of her slave girls? Or anyone else? Weaving was pretty popular.

But this isn't a well known or well studied piece. And I'm not an archeologist. What do I know?

But having proof of the Arachne myth from a Greek source in 500BCE would be super interesting, yeah?

So. What do you do when you're hyper-fixating at 11:30pm on an unknowable historical question?

I emailed the museum and asked.

I'll let you know if I find anything interesting.

[fandomsandfeminism]

So it's been a few months, and...to the best of my knowledge, this is just where we stand on this.

The museum never got back to me. I posed this question to a classics professor on TikTok who said basically the same thing - the references from Virgil and this specific vase seem to imply that there was *some* version of the myth that existed before Ovid.

But even he was like "...yeah, they are identifying this vase as Arachne but... it seems a bit speculative."

He also added that Arachne having a Greek name, not a Latin one, makes it more likely that Ovid was adapting something rather than just making it up himself (since he otherwise might have just used a Latin name?)

So. Unless someone digs up another villa or temple at some point and finds new evidence.... this is just... the state of things.

Which is kind of frustrating, but still very cool. If anything, it kinda hammers home HOW we, as modern audiences, know about these myths, how much of that tradition has been lost to time, and how we always need to be thoughtful about our sources and what assumptions we make based on them.

[honorthegods]

I find the assumption this weaving scene represents the competition of Athena and Arachne odd, to say the least, so I did some research.

Here is the description of Object CP 2038 by Gladys Davidson Weinberg and Saul S. Weinberg (1956):

See also: Williams, Charles Kaufman, J. Lawrence Angel, Peter Burns, and Joan E. Fisher. “Corinth, 1972: The Forum Area.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 42, no. 1 (1973): p. 13. https://doi.org/10.2307/147469.

Here's the description of the same vase from ASCSA: (https://ascsa.net/id/corinth/object/cp%202038)

woman to rt., weaving at vertical loom; long hair to below waist, wearing chiton and necklace; holds 2 rods. At rt. 2nd woman facing lt., standing on stool (?) with shorter hair, unbelted garment, holding 2 forked tools against loom. Loom: 2 uprights and horizontal cross-bar, loomweights holding warp threads, length of woven cloth at top with incised cross-hatching. Surface damaged to rt. of her: 3rd woman facing lt., possibly holding loomweights; 4th woman, very tall facing rt.; small 5th woman facing 4th; behind, 2nd loom like 1st.

As OP notes, there's nothing in this scene to relate it to the contest between Arachne and Athena. There are two looms and five women weaving, one of whom is apparently a child who has to stand on a stool to reach the weft.

Also, an aryballos is a container for perfume. It's hard to understand why such an object would be decorated with a cautionary tale, but makes better sense if the decoration is a domestic scene of women of various ages performing the normal household task of weaving.

I think that the Weinberg's interpretation of this scene is inaccurate.

I checked a few websites (the perseus.tufts.edu Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser, The Beazley Archive Pottery Database, the British Museum, and Wikimedia Commons - okay, not exhaustive, but still) and the only ancient depiction of the contest I could find is a frieze of Arachne and Minerva from the Forum of Nerva (built 85 - 97 C.E):

"Rome, Forum of Nerva, so-called "Colonnacce", detail of the frieze, scene with Arachne's punishment." Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RomaForoNervaColonnacceFregio2cAracne.jpg Image license: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Interesting commentary on this section of the frieze and Ovid's myth here: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/imperialfora/nerva/colonnacce.html

Good investigative work, OP!

If it's any consolation, I emailed a museum to ask about a particular object several years ago (it had been repatriated from the Getty and I was hoping they a photo) and never heard back from them, either.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Thank you! That's both validating and weirdly frustrating that this is the only Pre-Ovid depiction of the myth, and that it's so inconclusive at that.

I'm so interested in what the pre-Ovid version of this myth might have been like. His adaptations have a very specific thematic slant to them- the cruelty and foolishness of the powerful. As thinly veiled critiques of the political elite, he wasn't shy about radically changing the myths to suit that purpose.

So what would an Arachne story *without* that political goal be?

[fandomsandfeminism]

Thinking about this again.

I wish I could sit down with someone who identified that vase as an Arachne/Athena depiction and just....ask them.

Why was this identified as Arachne and Athena instead of, say Penelope and her slave girls? Which would seem to make more sense with some of the details?

[elbiotipo]

we don't hate J.J. Abrams enough

[elbiotipo]

Branson Reese, whoever you are, I keep your words in my heart all the time.

[kaijuerotica]

"branson reese, whoever you are" put some respect on the smooth sharks one fear man's name