#<- utter nonsense by the way

[iamdieterbravo]

au where hoffman is a literal bear who mauls people in a national park or some shit & strahm is the park ranger trying to subdue him

[wonder-worker]

how did henry VII think of edward IV? how did he refer to him during his rule?

Personally, we don’t know what Henry VII thought of Edward IV. I think it’s likely to have been more complex and/or conflicted than black-or-white, given the situation, but we naturally can’t presume to know what Henry may have felt.

Publicly, Henry gave him all the respect that was due to a former ruler. Edward's status as king by right and by law was explicit and unambiguous: he was repeatedly referred to as ‘Edward, late king of England’ (in contrast to, say, Richard III, who was derided as an undeserving usurper). In letters and other official documents, Henry would only ever refer to him as ‘our father, the most famous prince of blessed memory’. This was probably a more conventional address than not, but it certainly wasn't necessary for Henry to publicly identify with Edward in such a way - it's something he would have had to have chosen to do.

One of Edward's symbols, the white rose, became one-half of the defining symbol of Henry's regime and that of his successors. But it wasn't the only one: Yorkist emblems like the sun in splendour and the falcon and fetterlock were also used very prominently in Tudor iconography, such as the gates of Henry VII's chapel at Westminster Abbey. Henry continued other dynastic projects as well, such as the foundation of a convent for the Greyfriars.

Most strikingly, it's clear that Henry prioritized Yorkist traditions for both his heirs: his eldest son Arthur was raised at Ludlow as the March heir with Mortimer trappings, and he invested his second son Henry (the future Henry VIII) as the Duke of York, following the precedent Edward IV had begun for his second son Richard of Shrewsbury. It was only for his third unfortunately short-lived son Edmund that Henry revived the traditionally Lancastrian-associated title of Somerset. Dynastic priorities are quite clear*.

Moreover, while Henry VII repeatedly highlighted his connection to Henry VI (his uncle who was deposed and murdered on Edward's orders in 1471), taking great efforts to rehabilitate and canonize him along with the rest of the Lancastrians, Edward IV was still not officially blamed for anything. His central role in the destruction of the Lancastrians was entirely omitted from formal parliamentary records, and even the blame for Henry VI’s death was officially dumped on Richard III instead.

None of this should be especially surprising. Henry was married to Edward's daughter, and it was Edward's Yorkist supporters who "launched" Henry as an active claimant in first place after realizing that the Princes in the Tower were dead during October risings (which were originally meant to restore them to the throne) - not because they supported Henry's technical claim but because they wanted to put Edward IV's line back on the throne via Henry's marriage to Elizabeth of York. They joined him in exile and remained his councilors after he won the crown. Moreover, a great deal of Henry's reign consisted of Pretenders who sought the throne claiming that they were the sons of Edward IV - in this context, it makes sense that Henry would try to highlight his own connection to him in a similar way. (I think there's a very interesting discussion to be had about how Edward functioned as the posthumous dynastic focus for all claimants to the throne after 1483 in the lieu of Edward III for the claimants in the lead-up to the Wars in the 1450s, but that's another topic entirely).

There's also the simple fact that, despite the ample controversies of his second reign (regicide, fratricide, acceptance of bribes from France, posthumous slander by his own brother, etc), Edward IV seems to have remained very popular and well-regarded by the people of England. Even if Henry wanted to ruin his memory - and nothing suggests that he did, not least because of how it would reflect on his own queen - I think it's rather unlikely that he would have been able to do so. After all, Richard III had already tried and failed. On the contrary, the popularity and positions of Henry's own sons were bolstered by the fact that they were Edward's grandchildren and identified as such by his subjects. At the very least, Henry seems to have accepted this. However, given how closely he followed the precedents of the Princes in the Tower while raising his own sons, he was likely actively leveraging it for his own family's benefit. This is partly why I dislike the idea that Henry viewed Elizabeth of York's claim and popularity as threats to his position: we already know that this is not true, as both actually helped Henry secure his kingship and ensure the succession of his sons.

*Sean Cunningham talks about this further in the chapter "A Yorkist Legacy for the Tudor Prince of Wales on the Welsh Marches: Affinity-Building, Regional Government and National Politics, 1471-1502" in The Fifteenth Century XVIII, if you want to read up further on the topic.

[waytooinvested]

Small Problem... Chapter 2

You can find the full story on AO3

..................................................

Lena was in the middle of grinding up a chunk of dried rhubarb for her latest spell to try and de-miniaturise Kara when Dreamer came hurtling into the room at full speed, almost running right into the far wall when she failed to slow down in time, and startling Lena so much that she dropped her pestle.

‘Nia! What is it? What’s happened?’

She would have been more worried by the sudden entrance, if not for the fact that Nia was now bouncing excitedly from foot to foot, and holding -something- behind her back like a child who had just raided the cookie jar.

‘Have you seen Kara anywhere? She’s not on the snack table’.

There was a tiny huff of air against Lena’s ear, and an indignant little voice muttered ‘I don’t spend that much time with the snacks!’

‘She doesn’t spend that much time with the snacks’.

Nia chuckled at the passed-on-message, tilting her head to peer past the fall of Lena’s hair to where Kara was sitting comfortably on her shoulder, legs dangling by her clavicle and one hand fisted in her shirt for balance.

‘I don’t know why I even asked – I should have known if you weren’t making the most of a fresh batch of crullers you’d be in here with Lena’.

‘There’s CRULLERS???’

Lena didn’t have to speak up for Kara this time, because that had come out at a volume loud enough to make her wince, and definitely loud enough to carry to Nia standing a few feet away.

‘Kara, remember what we said about shouting and proximity to people’s ears?’

‘Oops, sorry…’ Kara patted the lobe of Lena’s ear apologetically. ‘But crullers Lena! I haven’t had a giant cruller yet, and you know they’re my favourite!’

‘Well hang on, that’s not what I came here to tell you! I got you a surprise!’

Nia was bouncing again, and at last Kara was diverted from the promise of fresh doughnuts by her obvious excitement.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s- drum roll please-’

Nia stamped her feet in a rapid tattoo to simulate her own drum roll, then brought out the thing behind her back with a flourish, plonking it down in the middle of Lena’s grimoire so it would be right in Kara’s line of sight.

‘-YOU!’

The big (well, little) surprise was a miniature Supergirl action figure. Just under five inches high, complete with Supersuit, cape, boots and flowing waves of plastic hair. They all stared at it for a moment, and then Kara lifted gingerly off Lena’s shoulder and floated down to have a closer look.

It was not a perfect likeness by any means, but one of the better of its kind, and seeing the two of them side by side was… a little uncanny, honestly. Kara walked a slow circle around her doppelganger, taking in its fixed plastic grin and hands-on-hips pose with a perplexed frown on her face.

‘Thank… you?’

‘What’s she supposed to do with it?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

Kara and Lena looked at the doll, then at each other, then shrugged.

‘Not really?’

‘The clothes. You can take the supersuit off, I checked! Even the boots are proper leather. Well, pleather, but I think they’ll be comfy enough – they’re soft anyway, not stiff plastic, and they look about the right size’.

Kara perked up at that, keen to get back into something that would feel more like her usual self.

Once it had become clear that getting Kara back to her proper size wasn’t going to be a quick fix, they had done their best to get her properly outfitted. Alex and Kelly had taken Esme home to raid her doll box for anything that might come close to fitting Kara, and they had found a few things that worked, which Kara had been wearing on rotation. Her favourite so far had been a tiny pair of blue jean style stretchy pants, and a matching blue shirt with long sleeves layered under short that had once belonged to a Tiny Teen!TM doll. Her LEAST favourite was the ill fitting ‘sleepy bunnikins’ baby doll onesie she had been forced to wear for one humiliating afternoon while chocolate frosting was washed out of her other clothes after an incident of over-exuberance helping Esme decorate cupcakes for her upcoming birthday party. The rest fell somewhere between the two on the spectrum of acceptability, but none had made Kara feel entirely herself, and they had had no luck at all so far with shoes.

Until now.

‘YES! Thank you Nia!!! Lena, would you mind…?’

Kara gestured at the open grimoire and Lena obligingly stood it up on its end to hide her and the doll from their view, hoping that it wasn’t inadvertently insulting to her mother’s memory to use her revered magic book as a changing screen. She and Nia waited patiently for the reveal, sharing an amused glance at the mutters and grumbles that emerged from behind the book as Kara wrestled her plastic twin out of its clothes and pulled them on herself.

When at last she emerged the twee floral dress and pinafore she had borrowed from Esme’s littlest china doll was gone, and Kara was once more dressed in an approximation of her own clothes. She struck her familiar Supergirl pose, hands on hips, newly shod feet set wide apart, and looked hopefully up at them.

‘What do you think?’

Lena examined her tiny friend and nodded admiringly.

‘Much better. You look like yourself again’.

It was true, but not wholly true. The sizing was no worse than any of the other outfits she had been making do with lately to be fair – better if anything, since it was made of stretchy, forgiving material, but knowing how her suit was supposed to fit made it all the more obvious that the sleeves of this one were straining around Kara’s biceps, while the too-long pants wrinkled and the top hung loosely across her chest. Apparently the manufacturers had taken some liberties with Supergirl’s bra size…

Nia squealed and clapped her hands in delight. ‘I’m so glad I stayed up til 4am in an ebay bidding war for it, it was TOTALLY worth it!’

‘Nia, you didn’t!’

‘Yep – there’s loads of Supergirl dolls out there, but most of them are too big, or the clothes are just painted on. THIS one is a much sought after “Superhero In My Hand” model, and the clothes come off so that you can swap them out with other dolls in the series if you want to. I really wanted to get little Dreamer too, but that one still had another two hours on the auction and Brainy changed the wifi password to force me go to sleep, so my nemesis got her instead’.

Lena raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a nemesis?’

‘I do now. Ebay user Iheartdreamer98’.

Nia glared darkly at nothing in particular, then dropped to a crouch so that she was at eye level with Kara on the table, grinning again as if nothing had happened.

‘This is so cool. What do you think of the doll?’

‘I love the clothes, but the actual doll is a bit creepy, and they made me look kind of constipated. Now she’s out of the outfit I don’t think she really looks much like me at all’.

‘So you don’t want to keep her?’

‘Not especially’.

‘Can I have her then?’

Kara frowned. ‘What for?’

Glancing between Kara and Lena, Nia beckoned them both closer before whispering ‘hijinks’.

‘Go on…’ Kara whispered back conspiratorially (then had to repeat herself more loudly, because at her current size a whisper was inaudible unless she practically climbed into your ear canal).

‘Well -’. Nia reached over the grimoire to pull out the doll, which Lena noticed was now wearing Kara’s cast off frills (apparently despite thinking it didn’t look like her she had felt weird about leaving it entirely naked, even though it must have been a pain trying to dress a from-her-perspective-life-sized plastic dummy). ‘-Brainy knows I bought this because he was there when I was ordering it. But no one else does. Alex doesn’t. I thought there might be some good pranking potential in it. What do you think? Something to do while you’re stuck in here?’

Kara grinned back wickedly ‘oh yes’.

After the first couple of days spent getting used to her new size and taking part in a dozen different (failed) attempts at de-shrinking spells, Kara’s mood had shifted from distress to boredom. She couldn’t go to work. She couldn’t fly out to save the day from villains (though she had waged an hours long battle to oust a rat that had been attempting to set up home in the tower, then spent a further day amusing Esme with stories and re-enactments of her daring exploits). She couldn’t even go out without someone’s pocket to hide in, in case anyone saw her and decided to use her relative vulnerability to their advantage. In fact as Nia had alluded to, the main solace Kara had now was her continued delight in over-sized snacks, but even her appetite had its limits, and she was desperate for things to do. It seemed that Nia might just have found a neat solution to both her need for proper clothing and her need for entertainment (even if it was at the expense of her long-suffering sister).

‘You’re with us, right Lena?’

‘I’m theoretically with you. I won’t tell Alex what you’re up to or do anything to spoil your fun, but I don’t think I’ll have time to actively join in. I really need to keep working on this spell so you can get back to normal’.

Lena hadn’t been doing anything but working on spells since Kara’s accident, even though she had long since tried even the most tenuously promising charms in her mother’s book, and was more or less just making things up now. She was using rhubarb, because it was known for its speedy and extensive growth. Bamboo shoots for the same reason. A dose of her artificial yellow sunlight to boost Kara’s innate powers and lend the spell strength… she was about 48 hours away from suggesting that Kara drink up her milk and go to bed early in the hopes that it would help her grow up big and strong, or else poking about in rabbit holes to find the way down to Wonderland and the caterpillar’s magic size changing mushroom, but she couldn’t admit it.

Not when whatever had happened had to have been her fault. She and Kara had been standing over the workbench together at the time looking through her grimoire. Their hands had collided as they both reached to turn a page and Lena had felt the usual surge of butterflies that came with touching Kara unexpectedly. Then suddenly all hell had broken loose and everyone else had been thrown across the room while Kara shrank to dolls house proportions. It must have been some unforeseen magical accident linked to the surge of emotion, or the physical contact while touching the book, or… something. And if Lena’s magic had caused this, that meant it must also be able to fix it.

The trouble was that despite going over the interaction second by second in her mind every hour since it had happened, she still had no idea what she had done, or how. She hadn’t been trying to do a spell. Not just a shrinking spell, but any kind. The idea that magic could just burst out of her uncontrollably like that was terrifying, and another reason why she had been spending most of her time holed up in this room away from the others, where she couldn’t accidentally hurt anyone.

In fact the only person she hadn’t made excuses to stay away from for more than five minutes at a time lately was Kara.

Kara, who was the one Lena had most hurt with her accidental witchcraft, but also the only other person who was as trapped in the tower as Lena was until she learned to keep her magic under tighter control. It felt unfair to turn her away when she was already so lonely and overwhelmed by her new size. Besides, Lena harboured a secret, desperate hope that if they were together enough then whatever she had accidentally done might be undone the same way. They would brush knuckles in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment, or Kara would step onto some special part of the grimoire, and just as suddenly as she had shrunk, she would grow back to her usual size and this would all be over.

She didn’t say that to Kara of course – to her and to everyone else she remained optimistic, assuring them that they weren’t out of options yet, and the next spell might just be the one that would do the trick. Well then, the next. Or the one after that. She would find it eventually. She had to. So she couldn’t let herself get diverted into playing games with Nia and Kara, no matter how hopefully they were looking at her now. That would be like admitting she was giving up. And besides, somebody might get hurt.

Kara crossed the table to her and patted her knuckle gently, understanding something of her distress, even if not all of it.

‘I know you want to work this out Lena, but you’re allowed to take a break. It’s okay if it takes time. I’m okay’.

Lena smiled back at her gratefully, but shook her head.

‘I know, and I’ll take a break if I need to. I just want to do a little more work on this one first’.

‘Are you coming up for dinner at least? J’onn’s cooking something Martian-inspired’.

‘Sounds good, but I’m not really hungry. Save me some left overs?’

‘Sure…’

Kara still didn’t look happy, but she flew up from the table to perch on Nia’s shoulder, and Lena listened to the two of them talking about how best to prank the others with their look-alike Kara as they clattered off back down the hallway, leaving Lena alone with her spells.

Rhubarb.

Bamboo.

Artificial yellow sun.

There had to be a way.

[touchlikethesun]

the next time someone calls english a "simple language" i'm bringing out the knives. this goes for any other language too actually. there's no such thing as a "simple" or "simplified" human language. if people speak it natively, it will be as complex and as simple as any other language. stop it with these made up hierarchies born of bitterness ffs

[waterfallofspace]

i love reading ur tags 🥰

omg- this is so sweet???? thank you???? 😭💗🫂

I always feel like a bit of an insane person in the tags (which is so true i am entirely chaos-horn driven in them >:3) so I'm so glad it's enjoyable to read them!! Thank you so much non!!!~ <3

[thephilosophersapprentice]

About a week ago I read the stupidest opinion piece I have ever seen from a philosophy professor who I will fortunately never have the displeasure of actually meeting due to me being 1) out of college and 2) living in the midwest rather than the east coast.

One of the points he made in his article was claiming that in the Lord of the Rings, industrialization is bad because it's industrialization.

No! Industrialization in the Lord of the Rings is bad because it damages the environment, it's following the same lines as real-world industrialization (aka exploited factory workers who often suffered horrifying injuries, the OSHA laws written in blood, the triangle shirtwaist factory fire!), the control factory owners chose to exercise over their workers being everything but legal enslavement, and it's making everyone miserable for all of those reasons!

I don't know how anyone could read the chapters on Mordor, Isengard, and the Scouring of the Shire without taking away that Tolkien's message was partly environmentalist, partly that people deserve to be happy, that industrialization is bad because it's hurting everyone, not just destroying their way of life but making people miserable and leaving them to starve!

Anyways. I bet the professor citing the lord of the rings has never actually read the books and probably not even seen the movies because he puts out the sort of navel-gazing drivel that makes it obvious he thinks "frivolities" like fantasy are below him.

It's a good thing that I will likely never meet this guy, because I would throw hands with him in a McDonalds parking lot.

[oftimeslostlongago]

This world was strange, it was a mirror copy of the one he had grown up on, even down to the sun. Yet nothing else seemed to be the same. He needed answers for that, though how he found them he didn't know. For now pretending to just be Clark Kent seemed to be helping. He didn't want to show his hand until he had no other option. It didn't seem like there was kryptonite here, and whilst that would be a complete relief, he also didn't really want to risk it if he was wrong, or there was something worse. If things got too out of hand then he'd do act. For now, it was just a case of being Clark, and occasionally accidently-on-purpose bumping into people. "Oh goodness, I'm so sorry, are you alright?"

@walstarterblog

[im-captain-basch]

I really really hate this whole "YouTube blocking adblockers and forcing you to either buy Premium or have ads" thing. It's so fucking stupid. I shouldn't have to play an Uno reverse card every time YouTube gets wise to a filter in it.

Premium isn't even all that good! It was great when you had access to original series, but once they stopped coming out with those, it's become so hard to justify having it solely to use when I want to listen to videos when I'm at work or moving about with no room in my hands for my phone, especially since it seems like the price for it keeps going up.

They're really intent on killing yet another platform, huh.

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

The short clip of “planet of the bass” was better than the full version

[transfaguette]

guy who just discovered cocoa pebbles: man you gotta try this

[machinel1ke]

Ok but We Were Rock And Roll by Janelle Monáe really is the most Snowbaird song ever

[elliestoybox]

Yknow what fuck it

I believe that if you are reading a mermaid melody manga and you DONT have to re-translate any of the dialogue in your head- you are NOT reading a mermaid melody manga

[plutosring]

im so glad yall find what i have to say interesting enough to follow me

[yuelun]

I'm a week late with a stupidly cute icon for Guizhong because it's baby dust flake Guizhong and everyone needs to see her. But also yes, I'm late, I apologise, I like to think it's better late than never.

Tag drop #1: General

[spittingoutthebloodandscreaming]

its so weird how the current idea of 'fan of a music genre as an identity' is such a new concept. it's not really present in how music and music enjoyment was discussed, as far as i know, pre-20th century. being a music lover, being musically educated, being a passionate admirer of specific composers, artists, singers, etc was. but the current genre-as-subculture-as-identity thing is very new. i wonder how it will look another hundred years from now

[vivalasthedas]

its after midnight, i can't find my phone so im gonna say some stupid shit

just watched that netflix movie 'apostle'

real mid motherfucker of a film huh?

Like obviously personal taste and all that, but it sits in that stage of trying to be both a more classic blood, gore, fights, horror, style scary movie with a veneer of trying to be something more. Like the writer got high and watched wicker man and midsommar in one sitting and went 'oh fuck yeah i can do that but worse'

and as someone who found midsommar fucking hilarious, this sort of film just usually doesn't work For Me. Can it be fun and enjoyable? For sure. If a movie is a great story, beautiful, well acted, I don't give a shit if it fulfils the promise of being scary. And I do know that 'scary' and horror are different. In like the pedantic nitpick genre ways of horror as a genre being a separate thing to a scary movie, and usually involving a more supernatural element and shit, and scary more being about the intended reaction of the audience. But I do not care right now.

ultimately

for real

my actual take away

dan stevens or whatever his fuck name is

was much more attractive when he was all round and squishy looking when he was younger. He got all hollywood fit and got boring.