sleepyshiv

[sleepyshiv]

Not even the chimney demon is safe from my mother's christmas decorating.

[sleepyshiv]

My little book club is reading His Dark Materials and daemons came up while my betrothed and I were cuddling in bed.

They said to me, “Do you think anyone’s daemon is a mosquito?”

“What? No way, that’s way too small!”

“No,” they countered, “We see beetles and butterflies, Pan turned into a little lightning bug, and a moth.”

I digested this information in silence, and then my betrothed started shaking with laughter and pitched in two different voices. “‘Where’s your daemon?’ ‘Oh, it’s a tick.’”

I let out such a guttural sound of amusement and horror that I scared the cats. I couldn’t stop laughing and repeating, “It’S a TiCk!!!”

I escalated in hilarity to choking out, “The only blood it can eat is it’s own persons! They JusT gO aRouNd with a TiCk on their face!”

“I don’t think daemons need to eat, do they?” They asked.

“IT’S A tIcK!!” I responded, tears rolling down my face, hyperventilating at the best and worst concept I’d ever imagined.

[sleepyshiv]

i might actually start crying

[sleepyshiv]

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

safety first, always. if you know someone who’s had an abortion, no you don’t. if you know someone is trans, no you don’t. if you know people who help with safe abortions, no you don’t—at least not until you know it’s 100% safe to share. if you are queer or have had an abortion, only share this with people you trust fully. most importantly, not everyone has to be an activist just because they’re part of a minority. if it feels unsafe to share that you're queer, trans, etc., then don’t. it doesn’t make you any less queer.

use secure, encrypted messaging like signal for conversations on potentially risky topics, such as queerness, abortion, organizing counter-actions, protests—anything that might be used against you.

stay anonymous online. if you want to research or report something without surveillance, do not use regular internet. get a vpn (mullvad is affordable and reliable), download the tor browser (for both onion and standard links), and if you plan to whistleblow, consider using a riseup email account.

organize and build networks. community is everything now. support each other, foster independence, because your government won’t have your back. set up collectives, grassroots movements. create lists of trusted professionals—lawyers, doctors, etc.—who can offer support.

to lawyers and doctors: please consider pro-bono work. this is what got us through poland’s hardest times. your work will be needed now more than ever.

for protests or risky actions: always write a pro-bono lawyer’s number on your arm with a permanent marker.

get to know the anarchist black cross federation and other resources on safety culture: "Starting an anarchist black cross group: A guide"; Still We Rise - A resource pack for transgender and non-gender conforming people in prison; Safe OUTside the system by the Audre Lorde Project;

for safe abortion info or involvement: get familiar with womenhelpwomen.

stay radical, stay strong, stay informed: The Anarchist Library

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

[sleepyshiv]

theres something about being disabled and needing to sit down constantly in public spaces that makes you notice how often benches are put up as tributes and memorials. and before i hit an age where i really started to need them as frequently i think i never fully understood the sentiment but now its become very endearing to me. a bit of relief and care for you in the name of someone who offered us the same… i dont think i had a point with this post but i hope everyone thats been memorialized as such knows how loved they were to become synonymous with respite even to total strangers

[sleepyshiv]

last time i was home from college i went to the dentist for a check up and they always give you a toothbrush after and the toothbrush sitting on the counter was yellow when i came in but at the end of the appointment i went to get it and it had been switched to orange and i asked why it was changed and the hygienist opened my file and handwritten on the inside cover it said “favorite color: orange”

[sleepyshiv]

Map of Thedas by Francesca Baerald

[sleepyshiv]

Ghil Dirthalen: "We found the missing letters, so hey! Who wants an Dragon Age Elven font! As a side note, in game they seems to use a symbol as a space, and we have not found punctuation. So for this font, the 'space' symbol is a '.' [link] Another note- the symbol for K is the same as Q. This is not a mistake on our end, it just... is that, haha." [source, two]

[sleepyshiv]

One of my fave things about the DA games is the parallels of characterization between the protags.

The Warden and The Inquisitor both have a kind of dignity and honor about them. They're both like "I absolutely did not want to be in this position, but here I am and we'll get this done one way or another." They both force people to work together for a greater good and unite under their banner and both are reasonably competent at their jobs.

Hawke and Rook on the other hand... things are just going wrong constantly for them, they are both consistently on their 13th reason, and their main defense is a "the horrors persist but so do I" attitude. They also did not want to be in the position they're in but they're "DOING MY FUCKING BEST CUT ME SOME SLACK I DON'T SEE ANYONE ELSE STEPPING UP" and if one more thing goes wrong they're both going to just start biting people.

[sleepyshiv]

(i'll follow this up with a poll once wrapped is out to see how many of us guessed accurately!)

[sleepyshiv]

They’re clearly too pure, too Fereldan for Antivan songs🥹

[sleepyshiv]

Happy Thanksgiving click these donation links

Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council

Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project

Aquinnah Wampanoag Cultural Center

[sleepyshiv]

"Don't just throw ripped jeans away, you can repair them using these 10 cute Visible Mending techniques!!" unfortunately my friend the first point of failure for every single pair of jeans i have owned in my life has been the Crotch and Ass. Knees: fine, cuffs: fine; but 3 years in, and all that stands between the world and my astronaut-patterned taint is 0.5µm of denim worn so thin that every squat threatens to tear it to shreds like wet toilet paper. If the Tiktok craft community could figure out a way to resurrect jeans afflicted in such a way that doesn't involve adding a whole ass buttpatch like some sort of inverse assless chaps situation then that'd be great

[sleepyshiv]

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today