gypsyscarfwoman - Tumblr blog

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Dame Maggie Smith as Muriel Donnelly The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)

[gypsyscarfwoman]

Dame Maggie Smith

1934-2024

[gypsyscarfwoman]

Took a year to complete this quilt! Pattern is by NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg called Cupola View. Fabrics used were also designed by Karen, the collection is called Earth Views.

[gypsyscarfwoman]

I have two kids. Pregnancy is very difficult, physically and mentally. Delivery is difficult (understatement). Not wanting to go through pregnancy and delivery is a valid reason for wanting an abortion. Nobody should get to sentence you to mental and physical suffering against your will. That's called torture, and in every other case it's illegal.

Look don't test me I'll block and turn off reblogs with a hair trigger if you all can't be normal about this but I do feel like it needs to be said that "do you think abortion should be allowed if the mother's reason for wanting it is—" the only acceptable answer to that question is Yes no matter what the end of that sentence is going to be. I do not care if someone wants an abortion for selfish reasons or bigoted reasons or cruel reasons or any other hypothetical strawman you can think of, there is no circumstance where someone should be denied the right to opt out of a forced pregnancy and birth. First of all, who's in charge of interrogating everyone seeking an abortion to make sure they're doing it for reasons Pure Of Heart? Second, why do you think Forced Birth is an appropriate punishment to inflict on anyone? If your answer to "should abortion be allowed when the motivation is—" is anything but an unequivocal "yes, and I don't care about the motivation" then you are not pro-choice

[gypsyscarfwoman]

On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[gypsyscarfwoman]

[gypsyscarfwoman]

to briefly revisit my decade old Labyrinth hyperfixation, I think it would be neat if Sarah grows up, has a teenage daughter who finds her book and while in a pissy mood wishes goblins would take her mother away

just imagining Sarah freaking the fuck out, taking the extremely limited amount of time she knows she has left to load up her confused daughter with all of the iron jewellery she never usually takes off, peppering her with instructions not to eat ANY of the food and vague warnings about illusions in the walls

and then suddenly before she knows it her mother is just gone, and she's being told by a strange glittery man that she must begin her own journey through the Labyrinth to find her mother

the funniest part however would be Jareth finishing his spiel to the daughter and returning to his castle to properly greet his new hostage with no fucking clue who he just snatched, and finds to his surprise and horror a Too Old For This Shit Sarah absolutely rampaging through the halls threatening to tear down his entire world all over again if he doesn't take her back to her daughter right the fuck now

I can't decide which is funnier, the tale ending with Jareth lobbing Sarah at her daughter before she even gets one foot into the Labyrinth and fucks them off home immediately, or the daughter completing her shockingly easy journey through the Labyrinth only to find her mother sitting in the king's throne with a dazed Jareth under her heel and terrified goblins waiting on her hand and foot

[gypsyscarfwoman]

[gypsyscarfwoman]

The duality of man is thinking “children cannot help themselves and we all need to be patient with them as they explore what it means to be human in public” and also “damn, I wish this crying baby was not on the plane rn :/“

[gypsyscarfwoman]

ⓘ This user needs a long break from everything.

[gypsyscarfwoman]

Baking vlog 👍

(All jokes aside, I knit these bastards by hand! Etsy link)

[gypsyscarfwoman]

I'm almost 30 and still amazed you can just walk into a library and pull a book off a shelf and read it, don't even need to ask anyone, can just sit down and read book for free until closing time. There is nothing that free anywhere else that isn't serreptitiouly religious or requiring registration. that's how stuff should be. Libraries are so good

[gypsyscarfwoman]

honestly tv is really dead. I’m tired of streaming services making those 8 episodes shows that never get the chance to have more seasons after making the audience invested in the characters and also making the cast and creators uncertain and anxious about getting the chance to go back to another season. I miss when we had actual shows with multiple seasons in production from the start to keep the interest going, this format of not quite a show but also not a limited series fucking sucks and I feel so bad for everyone that works for these streamings

[gypsyscarfwoman]

honestly tv is really dead. I’m tired of streaming services making those 8 episodes shows that never get the chance to have more seasons after making the audience invested in the characters and also making the cast and creators uncertain and anxious about getting the chance to go back to another season. I miss when we had actual shows with multiple seasons in production from the start to keep the interest going, this format of not quite a show but also not a limited series fucking sucks and I feel so bad for everyone that works for these streamings

[gypsyscarfwoman]

Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness

[gypsyscarfwoman]

[gypsyscarfwoman]