It is that time of year again, though this one is a little more special, I suppose. Wish I could do more, but I'm super busy with the Replica Holiday Special and a few other projects! A lot of people really liked my TED Talk last year about aging, so I guess I could give an update on that for those interested!
The big 4-0. It feels strange, being here and not feeling like I should be. I was always a Toys R Us kid / Lost Boys brat who never wanted to grow up and did everything possible to make it so! Still do I suppose, haha. The older I get, the quicker time seems to fly. It literally feels like my 39th was a month or so ago. But I also feel like I'm able to retain and understand so much more.
This past year has been intense. I dealt with the loss of a dear friend even younger than myself and went through a major cancer scare that really put my life into perspective. Through it all, being a part of this community has been a bedrock and something to focus my mind on as I grappled with these daunting aspects of my life. To be creative again has brought so much new energy into my life and being surrounded by so many other wonderful, supportive creatives and followers has been the greatest blessing.
Each of you who have sent me art, or words of encouragement, or questions have only added to this wonderful experience. And while I cannot answer them all due to time and shear mass, I still read each and every one of them, and I thank you. Truly.
There is so SO much I still want to do in this life and for this community, and while it's not something I'm really making any sort of money from, it has been so nice to simply create again. Makes me feel like a kid.
I don't know what this next year will bring but I'm just... so grateful to be alive. It's a true blessing and privilege to grow old that many do not receive in their life. And while I may not truly be "old" in the grand scheme of things compared to many, I, WE ALL, will always be the oldest we have ever been in every moment of our existence. Whether that be 9 or 90. So enjoy your oldest moment every chance you get! <3
Corrugated ribbing, my beloathed! It looks so nice but it's such a hassle to knit...I will say, though, that since I learned to hold each color of yarn in a different hand for two-color knitting, and do the purl stitches with the left-hand yarn, it's a much smoother process than when I first learned to do it and had to drop one yarn and pick up the other and move the yarn from front to back and back to front to alternate knits and purls and so on.
I got the chart for these gloves all ready to begin and then looked at the actual pattern notes from the prototype gloves and realized I have to first do the corrugated ribbing. Oh dear! XD And if that isn't hassle enough, we're going to top that ribbing with a Latvian Braid.
So anyway, after a few rows of this nonsense, I let myself get distracted from the two inches of ribbing I need to knit by...uh...filming the process. And then I discovered I have a video editor so I added stuff. :-D Just how much can I procrastinate actually finishing this ribbing? I'd better get back to it now!
Interestingly enough, there are so many different views on why Ace didn't run away in marineford, despite the fact that Oda tried to provide an explanation. It feels like I have barely seen the same conclusion between two people.
HELLO you teach elementary schoolers how to draw dragons?? 👀 that is the DREAM I used to teach my friends how to draw dragons during lunch in high school heheh
oh that is SO much fun HELL yes >:D
and yeah! i'm a part-time art teacher and as part of a program i'm in i go around to elementary schools and teach art workshops!! in the fall i taught them the basics of making comics and now that it's spring i'm teaching them how to draw dragons, somedays i wear my dragon button-up shirt and dragons socks too and it fucking rocks i feel like ms. frizzles cousin who's also gay
"I will be honest, this is not my kind of maths and I took it for the credits" and other things every lecturer wants to hear their student admit after praising how well they did and asking what they thought of the course.
i watched the movie Akelarre and it's this great period piece story about a group of basque girls accused of witchcraft when the men of their home are away and inorder to postpone their execution they bid time by tempting him with the witches sabbath- what I love about it is their is no supernatural element. None of these girls are actually powerful witches- they are normal teenagers who lie to and fuck around with horrible sexist men with guile and you see how stupid the logic of their inquisitor is.
I've talked about the oppressed mage trope before and why while I don't think it's a bad trope that needs to retire- its certainly very lazy and not a very good mirror to real world oppression at all and their are more believable and compelling ways to depict power as a curse or generate conflict. aang as the avatar is expected to reject a massive part of his cultural identity (his pacifism) and has to let go of his worldly attachments (katara), he has to be the one to save the world cause no one else can and him being rejected by his peers when he wanted to play and being excluded makes sense and he is oppressed for reasons outside of his powers. Steven universe has to struggle with his powers a lot, he almost ages himself to death and ages himself rapidly in reverse, and he projects his anxieties and subconscious thoughts onto technology beyond accident (that sounds like a fucking nightmare) heck RWBY while deeply a flawed show, shows why being a maiden would suck- Amber seems to have been isolated from the rest of the world for her protection (to keep her away from other more powerful magic users that would use her) and Fria an older woman with Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia is isolated as well stuck in her hospital room only allowed Winter's company to ensure that Winter would be the last person in her mind so that the maiden powers would be given to her both woman saddled with incredible responsibility, ice kings's powers came at the cost of Simon's sanity. And it's so much interesting than the shit x men and owl house pulls- love both but whenever they try and make real world parallels to gay rights or civil rights it kind of falls flat.
Whenever I've heard people complain about the issues with this trope it's always from the racial or gay perspective so I wanna try a different lens- disability. discrimination against disabled people often uses the idea that people with mental illnesses are dangerous or have an 'unfair' advantage.
People with BPD and ASPD are often kicked out of therapy and helpful services because of how demonized these disorders people with psychotic disorders are often ignored by police and gaslit on top of having a disorder that can make their grip on reality tenuous- they aren't seen as trustworthy, People with learning disabilities are denied opportunities and scholarships if they mention it and boy oh boy if your special Ed in any capacity say goodbye to AP classes and say hello to being more restricted in what your allowed to do compared to your able classmates, physically disabled people are accused of being fakers and 'too sensitive' and the world isn't all that accommodating (I've seen way too many videos of ramps that aren't useful to wheelchair users at all) and too many people who freak out over disabled people getting accommodations/help of any kind- kids getting extra timr on tests, more bathroom breaks, financial assistance, interpreters etc- to many people they see these as unfair advantages
I remember a boy in my class broke both of his legs at one point and people called it unfair he got to use the elevator and that the rest of us couldn't- i knew another boy who had a concussion who was allowed to opt out of computer class and do math instead and he got crap cause 'he was basically skipping class. My sister had to take highschool all over again because she was a special needs student (dyslexia and ADHD) and the diploma she earned was considered 'invalid' and when she got so sick she passed a lot and needed to recover from a traumatic emergency surgery she got yelled at and got in trouble for using her temporary extra accomodations- i was told growing up that i didn't belong in normal classes because I needed double time to complete tests, that if I couldn't do it in the normal amount of time that meant I didn't know what I was doing and that I was too stupid to be in the second grade and needed to be kept in kindergarten and that went on for years- I'd be told to stop reading the books I bought to school because I was too dumb to read them basically and every tiny mistake I made was used to forcibly push me to be put in special ed (i barely made mistakes btw- so no i didn't beed to be put in sped- I read at super high level as a kid) my classmates would fuck up just as much as I did- no one would bat an eye, i would catch onto patterns faster than my classmates, id point out details they never seemed to see but because of my shit memory and misunderstanding what the teacher was saying meaning that I needed some extra time to complete a test meant I was r34@!d3d and obviously because i needed that extra time i again was told i didn't know what i was doing, my other sister with dyscalcula was forced to take a test without accomodations they knew she needed to prove she was disabled again despite having an iep that was given to them because reasons i guess also she has a personality disorder that she doesn't want fully specified to avoid the problems that could come from a bpd or aspd diagnosis- I remember at one point being told i was basically a cheater for needing extra time, that my autism symptoms was just being bratty (and the way autism symptoms where described made people with asd sound like godawful immature people) and again that if i 'didn't know what i was doing' I didn't belong- the thing about this is these excuses people used to justify this shit are used in fiction towards a group of people that actually are super dangerous and actually have an unfair advantage- they get oppressed using the same excuses but in their case this shit is true.
Disabled people are oppressed because they get disadvantage and that disadvantage is used to justify oppressing them- even your part of an oppressed racial or sexual minority you can still walk and have a normal brain capacity- being black or gay doesn't effect your ability to walk or read or feel emotions it effects your treatment, the way people judge you- but being disabled does in fact effect your ability- it effects your empathy, your physical strength, your intelligence negatively so that already makes life harder than able people then people see that you are unable in someway and use that to make life even harder cause we equate ability with worth and what treatment a person 'deserves'. It's because of shit like that, that I know people with powers wouldn't be oppressed- they'd be beloved, any fear toward them would be justified if their power level reached a certain point and in general they wouldn't be oppressed because oppression flows from power not to it.
With antisemitism Islamophobia and racism and lgbt-phobic rhetoric they have to make up excuses too- they make shit up like 'black men are rapists, Jews are always genocidal hoard all the wealth and are secretly running the universe and are at fault for everything baf and are pedos, Muslims are terrorist and gay people will corrupt our children into being sex toys' none of which is true! Also again disabled people's accomodations (extra time, breaks, getting a bit of extra focus, getting to use an elevator or ramp cause their on a fucking wheelchair) aren't unfair advantages that are negatively impacting able people (me getting to take a short break from class does not take away from your experiences or cause you problems Deborah)
It's funny in the real people are oppressed because they don't have power or even have disadvantages and they have problems like incontinence or being unable to get out of bed and in fiction they are oppressed because they have too much power and are super cool. I love x men Scott Summers has been my favorite x men since i was like 8 but the x men makes zero sense, they would not be oppressed, REAL advantages are never used to justify oppressing people- REAL advantages are used to oppress people (I emphasized REAL for a reason as someone who has accomodations they are not an actual advantage over my neurotypical classmates). Jewish people, gay and trans people don't have special powers so you can throw them in jail easy, people with Crohn's and learning disabilities and cerebral palsy have disadvantages/struggles which are used to justify oppression meanwhile people in fiction are oppressed for their advantages and lack of struggle. The girls in Akelarre have no powers, they only narrowly escape their execution via trolling the guy abusing them into thinking he can see the witches sabbath if he lets them live until the time the men come back, and that's how you do write irl oppression, fma also knew what it was doing with the Ishvalans- no special powers just normal people with a different appearance. Let's not retire the oppressed mage trope there is a place for it but let's be aware that the excuses used to justify it mimic irl ableist excuses and that because of that it can lead to uncomfortable implications if your not careful
it feels like that trope in fanfic where someone is a straight up god mod sue and none of the conflict feels believable because of them having such extreme power that the conflict should be a corpse,.so the writer just makes shit up. I Love stories with this trope (I actually like the god mod sue fanfics and I'm willing to ignore bullshit conflict so long as the drama that ensues is juicy enough) and I'm not offended by it (again x man fan) but again I would love to see people come up with better conflict than nonsensical fantasy racism allegory that doesn't work as an actual race allegory when you apply logic to it. It's overdone and I wanna see people get creative.
Tldr the oppressed mage trope makes no logical sense (how the fuck do you oppress magneto?) and irl peoples disadvantages are used the excuse to oppress them and when the excuse is that the oppressed party has power that power is made up/ its fake/greatly exaggerated.
Also the last time I linked this article the link didn't work so here I go again:
obviously all of it's bullshit but "girl math" is particularly insidious because like, yeah, lots of girls and women (in the u.s. for sure but probably other places, too) struggle w/ math because of sexism. we deal with shitty sexist teachers and professors, we get pushed out of or away from STEM fields in general, we don't get the same level of help and support in those classes - but that doesn't mean being bad at math is inherent to a single gender!
if a woman is bad at math, it isn't becasue of her gender. if gender is involved at all, it's gendered notions of what men and women are "good at" - because patriarchy says men are logical, rational, reasonable, while women are emotional and soft and good with words rather than numbers and blah blah blah. don't feed into it with this "girl math" horse shit! hypatia is rolling in her fucking grave.
ok so what I am gonna do is write down the things I need to do, and at the end of the day I truthfully reblog with what I was able to do-
Writing :-
Eco-
Presentation of Data
Measures of Central Tendency
History -
Nomadic Empires
The Three Orders
Home Science -
Fabric around us
Media and communication technology
concerns and needs in diverse contexts
a. Nutrition, health and hygiene
b. Resource availability and management
English-
Speech
Note Making
Tenses
Exercises
reordering sentences
Learning :-
Eco-
Micro-
Theory of Consumer's Behaviour
Theory of Firm under Perfect competition(supply)
Stats-
Organisation of data
Presentation of data
Measures of Central Tendency
English -
Main-
We're not afraid to die
Discovering Tut- The saga continues
Poem - The Laburnum Top
The Voice of the Rain
Supp-
The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse
The Address
History-
An Empire across three continents
Nomadic Empire
The Three Orders
Political Science -
Election and Representation
Executive
Legislature
Judiciary
Home Science-
Management of Resources
Fabric Around Us
media and communication technology
concerns and needs in diverse contexts-
a. Nutrition, health and hygiene
b. Resource availability and management
actually a cool place sent me a challenge/assessment and alas I probably do gotta study further to get into this field because I have no idea what I am doing. it's still extremely addictively good though somehow
so in juniper's campaign we've just found ourselves in a high-stakes situation that I as a player do frankly find stressful and am anxious about, but hey hi also the DM was like 'okay here are the exact mechanics of how this is going to work because I don't want to surprise you with serious repercussions, also here are all the options you will have to try to do something about the situation-- [affected player] what do you think? honest feedback, I don't want it to feel unfair, I want to be clear that I am not just trying to kill your character, and if it ends up being badly balanced we can revisit it down the road' and oh my god I could COLLAPSE and WEEP with gratitude