#I use this site to rant and post poems

[secondbestafterthatmeteorstrike]

Now twitter is gone, when do we get to see the green bodysuit on the tumbles?

I’ve not worn that bodysuit since 2021 so I’m gonna take a wild guess and say we aren’t close. I don’t post stuff like that on here because men are creepy and always make it weird.

[sweetbisscuit]

I have just finished reading this manhwa entitled “To use an Angel” and I have never felt so sad from how they ended that mahwa (it has 88 chapters)

So much so that Dostoevsky themselves have compelled me, NO, possessed me to make this poem. So here’s a poem fueled by distraught and anguish.

*be warned that this will contain spoilers

**another thing, you won’t he able to get this unless you’ve finished the mahwa

My Yoon Kiom is dead. She died without notice, without the idea that her existence will no longer be there anymore, without even getting to say goodbye to the 2 people she cherished.

Who will mourn for her loss other than her brother? My poor darling creature, she was just beginning to be acknowledged, be wanted, be seen without the premise that someone wanted her just to use her. And now the author consoles us, tells us that you are her. But where is my Yoon Kiom? Where forth is the Yoon Kiom that showed us she was her own person? Where is our Yoon Kiom who resisted of such fate, who, with her persistence wanted to be seen as true? I will speak of it no more. I have already been left of my feeling and never acknowledging ‘that’ as my darling.

[letoasai]

No one remembers Anime Spiral

What do kids even do on the internet? I'm genuinely asking. Everything revolves around social media and that's fine but what do they do. Are their cool things they can do anymore?

There used to be websites and you would just wander the internet on the family computer. Newgrounds. Gaia Online. Neopets. Yahoo Games. Quizzila. Live Journal... I'm not saying they were all great but they were something to do and... no i'll commit, they were great. I wasn't worried about posting pictures of myself when i was busy watching a flash animation of Dragonball Z that someone put painstaking hours into.

A lot of younger kids and teens don't know how to download something and save it to a particular folder on their computer because they've never used a computer. Meanwhile we were somehow... coding our Myspace pages to have a particular background. When did we acquire that knowledge?

In 2004/2005 i went looking for Inuyasha pictures, as one did, and i stumbled upon a site of people posting fanfiction? Sign me up... Anime Spiral was the wild west of chaos fanfic writers. People would make banners for their work that would sit in their summary sections. God help you, but those seizure inducing flashing colors were going to get your attention.

People would write anything, stories, poems, lyrics. People would post art and open commissions for people to ask for things in the comments, and the OP would just do it... There were frantic collaborations. Some were really good. Some were really bad.

There were chaotic originally stories with random anime characters thrown in for fun because who was going to tell them they couldn't? Some people just ranted to anime characters and i will always remember Ask Sesshomaru where you'd ask Sesshomaru a question in the comments and the next chapter he would answer every.single.question. The fact that it was probably a 16 year old girl writing that just didn't matter.

Some people just posted picture of anime characters. They did all the internet searches so you didn't have to! They were harder to find then.

The comment/response section to this day... was the best format i've seen on a fanfic site (imo). It was so easy. I miss it! I miss going to my word processing class and pulling up that site and chatting with people in the freaking comments of whatever...terrible story i'd posted at the time. I was probably so proud of it then but yikes...

The notification system was good and it was easy to talk to people without it feeling intrusive.

Maybe Anime Spiral was Tumblr before Tumblr.

I met two strangers on Anime Spiral a week apart. Internet dangers weren't as obvious then as they seem now. Those two strangers became two of my best friends. It's been nearly twenty years and they are still so prevalent in my life.

I met my best friend on that site. That seems so impossible to me now. We never would have met otherwise and i can't imagine my life without them. We were so upset when Anime Spiral went down. We missed the ugly green and mustard yellow template to this day.

It wasn't a great site, it had it's problems... It had a lot of problems but at the same time, it was a great site. It's hard to find people who even remember Anime Spiral anymore. Going to FF .net or Fiction Press afterwards felt like... a downgrade somehow. The systems overly complicated and it lacked...something.

I do enjoy the hell out of AO3, it actually checks all the boxes for a great writing site, but i'll always remember the chaotic nostalgia of Anime Spiral.

What do kids do on the internet now? Is it safe? Is it just selfies, gossip, and bullying? Do you have a little dragon you can take care of? Neopets could take up a lot of their attention. I don't think 2024 Neopets is the same as 2005 Neopets and that's a shame.

I have no idea. I feel old.

[crispynott]

meh rant post or whatever, i literally get 0 attention on this app so y not I used to think of myself as a pretty sensitive person up until an year ago, but the last year i felt like major progress and now small things don't really faze me that much. But recently, like this past week, i feel like the past issues are coming back lol.

heh it's nth serious, just that multiple different friends left me on seen lol. ik it sounds very very trivial but yeah it is what it is.

There's basically been 3 different instances of it so yk i usually don't care about being left on seen, unless the message was something important/urgent but yk when it happens in a larger amount it kinda stings.

Now 2 of the 3 are online friends, out of which 1 is pretty "absent headed"(?) lol like im used to them responding late or leaving me on seen it's chill ez. but the other one is like vvv chatty, and they often call me out for leaving them on seen and being a dry texter lol the irony. so yk with them it's kinda odd.

and the other one is a whole big irl friend group or whatever that i feel is kinda swaying away from me, maybe it's all in my head but there have been instances in this week where i feel like they've been ignoring me?? lol and the thing is idk for how long we're gonna meet irl coz pretty soon it's gonna be an online friend group as well so i don't really want things to end on a bad note(a line from a famous poem just popped into my head as i was writing this wow lol).

now the thing is i don't really care much about texting or at least that's what i used to think lol, but yeah it's always been a trivial thing for me, like yeah man respond whenever u feel like i do that too. sometimes i will be on that same site and be posting but just not texting back to someone, just coz i doesn't feel like it yk and when someone does that to me i don't really mind it as well.

but THEN WHY, all of sudden i have this sinking feeling about sth which i don't even consider important. could it be that deep down I DO CARE about texting, and have been lying to myself lol??? that fr is the worst feeling coz yk it gets you thinking about life and stuff and how all of the things which you thought you believed in weren't actually so true

HUH yk what writing here about all of this does make me feel better also one of the friend i mentioned above is here on this hellsite lol but they don't follow me so it's chill although it would really spice things a bit if they found this account🤪🤪🤪

[justsupermarket]

Raindrop drop top funny memes

RAINDROP DROP TOP FUNNY MEMES HOW TO

2022 The raindrop sculptures are among their most popular. Marisa Lascala, Good Housekeeping, 22 June 2022 If the virus came in the form of a raindrop, parts of our country would still be getting drenched.ĭr. Martin Weil, Washington Post, 17 July 2022 Here are some names to consider for your own raindrop, also listed in order of popularity. 2022 There is a feeling, an experience, of being you-a feeling that a frying pan, a raindrop, or a lump of sugar does not have.Ĭamille Bromley, The Atlantic, 18 July 2022 Saturday may have had its bright and shining hours, but many of us did not need to look for to see the atmosphere preparing to convert itself to a raindrop production footing. Matthew Cappucci, Washington Post, 9 Aug. 2022 Light enters an ice crystal or raindrop and slows down, but each color slows down, and is resultantly refracted, or bent, at slightly different speeds and angles. 2022 With so many in need, aid that does arrive can disappear like a raindrop in the sand.Ĭara Anna,, 20 Aug. People are pressed over the milk and honey meme when lots of art/music/poetry/ect has been made into jokes before.Recent Examples on the Web Once storms end near and after sunset, a raindrop remains possible till about midnight. I swear to god this Rupi Kaur/Milk and Honey meme is the funniest meme all year… modern poetry in its purest form While others think it’s the best thing that’s happened to the internet in quite some time. Understandably, the meme is a bit divisive. “People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple,” Kaur herself has said. Kaur’s poetry, which was described in the New York Times as having “artless vulnerability,” is just an easy target. There’s a little bit of that going on with the Milk and Honey Vine quote meme.īut there’s also mockery of poetry in general, and its perceived pretensions. The internet gives especially harsh treatment to popular things young women love, often dismissing them as vapid just because girls like them. And then there’s its main audience: young women on Instagram and Tumblr. Few poetry books ever become social media sensations, let alone receive the kind of exposure and mainstream marketing push Kaur’s book did. What makes Milk and Honey such a target of mockery? Partially, it’s how successful it’s been. Sorry but this shit sucks so bad lol /axjlIv1hkn Twitter’s Bobby was so incensed at Kaur’s poems that he went off on a long, mocking rant, culminating in one brilliant Photoshop:

RAINDROP DROP TOP FUNNY MEMES HOW TO

This was my favorite poem from milk and honey, so deep and meaningful /SMcIoFH0E3Īnd Jared, who never learned how to read: Who said Milk and Honey wasn't real poetry? /O44uBODajt Notable entries include the “Miss Keisha” Vine Other Kaur detractors picked it up and ran with it, making Vine quotes look like actual pages from the book. The trend seems to have started with this tweet by RicardoJKay, which throws shade at Rupi Kaur by implying that adding line breaks to any chunk of text makes it just as poetic as Milk and Honey. Even if it’s “Step the fuck up, Kyle” Vine or the classic “ Post up.” There’s a growing trend of taking absurd quotes from the defunct video site Vine (R.I.P.) and using Photoshop to pass them off as pages from Milk and Honey. Some are obvious jokes, and others … well, if you haven’t read the book, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were real poems. And, as with anything popular, Milk and Honey is facing an inevitable backlash. It’s basically the only contemporary poetry book you can buy on sale at Target. Milk and Honey, a collection of poems by 20-something Canadian social media personality Rupi Kaur, has received a huge amount of exposure since its release in 2016.

[lnkedmyheart]

Mini rant about sormik canonicity

Disclaimer: This is a very chaotic post because I have a migraine and my thoughts are jumbled but bear with me.

As someone who works with literature and old texts and had to learn to read texts from different perspectives, I don't give much weight to the idea of the canon. However, I have spent years researching the changing trends in lgbt rep in media. But first:

What exactly is the canon? Well according to the dictionary, "...the literary canon is often understood to mean the group of authors or works that a consensus of academics, historians and teachers recognise as worthy of study". Going by this we must consider two things when analysing a text for lgbt love. The time period it originated in and the author's intent. Typically. However, we also know that a lot of texts are created as a means to rise AGAINST the grain of time and once enough time is passed, a lot of additional sources get lost and all you have to rely on is the actual text itself. No creator to confirm anything via Word of God, no supplementary text to support certain ideas and so on.

As to why I don't always like the idea of canonicity, its quite simple. Researchers, historians and academicians will never be free from bias. I once wrote a poem about someone being saved from drowning and posted it on a creative writing site and I got flooded with comments about how deep it was and how it was all a metaphor for losing oneself or faith. It wasn't. The authorial intent here had been entirely my personal experience about nearly drowning. But without my word, that was how people chose to view it.

Its a historical fact that a lot of ancient texts were altered and read in a way to insist that intense mlm and wlw bonds were reduced to just super extra intense friendships. But reading all these texts now we KNOW there was atleast an element of homosexual love in the texts and that is honestly all that matters right?

Finally onto sormik and whether or not Sorey and Mikleo are actually canon. Its such a contested topic that its honestly hilarious at times. On one hand there is an argument that they don't kiss or confess and are therefore not canon, which is a very flawed idea based on several factors which everyone already knows of. And then there is the whole insistence that just cause two men are friends doesn't mean they are in love. On the other there is so much extra information and vague creator confirmation that sormik was infact intended to be read as romantic to some extent and that Sorey shows no real interest in women.

But is it really canon? Here's a comparison. Achilles and Patroclus. It is a unanimous belief NOW that those two were deeply in love. They were brothers in arms, close friends and were willing to die for each other. Their descriptions and the way they interacted was never explicitly sexual but it was extremely heavily implied to be driven by love of a romantic kind. Atleast that is what we read it as today. We don't have any creator confirmation for this, we don't have supplementary material to support this belief. They never smooch on paper. All we have is the text to interpret. 100 years from now, when someone looks at Sorey and Mikleo free from the creator confirmation and extra material regardless of which source they use, would they be inclined to see it as romantic?

I argue yes. Like Achilles and Patroclus, Sorey and Mikleo are brothers in arms, they value each other the most, wish to spend the rest of their lives together and we literally have Mikleo wait several centuries for Sorey to return. These tropes are heavily associated with romance, these tropes are the very reasons why so much historical text is now being looked at from a non heteronormative lense regardless of authorial intent but why do we insist on drawing the line in modern media when the exact same tropes are being used? Why is it that lgbt romances cannot be chaste and innocent like heterosexual romances? I would LOVE an onscreen kiss between wlw or mlm pairs but why is it compulsory to be read in any way other than a dudebro bonding moment? There is a tendency to hypersexualise lgbt love, and yes, being gay or lesbian or bisexual is a sexuality but that doesn't inherently make it sexual.

So whether or not sormik was intended to be romantic and whether or not Sorey was intended to be gay is irrelevant in the long run. To me personally, it is as canon as can be because I know for a fact that if Sorey existed in an ancient text with no change to his character and story, he'd be treated like a gay icon by modern lgbt historians.

Would it be nice if it was intentional? Yea. Would it not being intentional change the fact that a large part of Sorey's bond with Mikleo mirrors the queer experience of several young lgbt people? Not at all.

Anyway.

Rant over.

SorMik canon as can be y'all.

[styxfoxx]

Don't worry!! Now there's one simple thing you have to understand: stupid questions do not exist.

Being a Hellenic pagan can be different from being to being. Some believe in myth literacy. That means those beings believe that what happened in the myths is real (ex. that Zeus turned into gold rain to impregnate a woman). Most of us, like me, believe that myths are used to tell a different story, to teach a lesson like most tales for kids. That's what they're used for.

We (again, personal beliefs) do not believe that the gods have a physical form but they can definitely interact with the world around us. And you can see them in everything, they give you signs, if you know what to look for (NOT EVERYTHING IS A SIGN-- Tiktok. Please do not take a video as a sign that's called an algorithm). Some use divination to communicate with the gods (tarots, runes, pendulum, scrying, tea leaves, automatic writing, etc.) while others like me just pray to the gods and maybe ask for some signs (ex sometimes I ask Apollon to send me some crows or corvids if he received my prayer/accepted it). Many have altars, leave offerings, write poems, have statues, sing hymns and do rituals.

Let me tell you something really important: we don't have a bible. We have the Illiad, Homeric Hymns, the myths and all that but we have no "right" way to practice the religion. Everyone is free to do what they please. We don't have sins, we only have hubris. What is hubris? To say it shortly is exaggerated pride or not enough confidence. If you think of yourself as more or less than what you really are then that's hubris. (example "I am prettier than Aphrodite" no girl you're not. "I am smarter than Athena", "I am a worse father than Kronos in the myths" no. No. Just no.). Other important aspects of Hellenism could be found in this post. OP says they are personal. Anyway if you go on my religious sideblog, especially on #~sunrays you can find some useful information. Also, r/hellenism has some pretty good information on the FAQs.

As a devotee of Apollon I like to say Goodmorning and Goodnight to him, I think of him and dedicate a simple act such as brushing my teeth to him, He is the god I pray the most to. I generally worship them all but I'm also pretty focused on Dionysus and Morpheus. You don't have to wait to be called by a god to start worshipping them, you can choose. Hestia, Aphrodite, Apollon and Hermes are the most worshipped in this religion and it was the same in ancient Greece. And nothing stops you from worshipping Hera, Sekhmet, Proserpine and Odin all together. It's your religion Alexander, you're the first being that has to feel comfortable with it.

Sorry this was a long rant and it's probably disconnected in some parts. Feel free to ask more and go around doing some research!! A good site I can tell you is theoi.com

Theoi means gods in greek btw :3

Because of my religion I've started saying things like "oh my gods" "oh Lord Apollon" instead of "oh God" "oh Jesus Christ" or maybe to curse I say "damned Tartarus" but that's a personal preference! I just adapted my way of talking to my belief.

(saying "you" in a generic sense. Could be everyone) A beautiful thing is that you can literally see the gods in everything. The phone you're using? Hephaestus. Taking public transport? Hermes. Watching sunrise? Eos. Drinking alcohol? Dionysus. Sleeping? Hypnos. Dreaming? The Oneiroi. A storm is Zeus reminding you of his presence, when you challenged the sea to give you bigger waves as a kid you were playing with Poseidon, when your pet died, Thanatos helped it pass away and Hermes brought it's soul to Hades' kingdom. When you picked berries from the bushes, Demeter was next to you. Dionysus was proud when you first drank a sip of you mom's wine but he is also with you when you take care of your mental health. Apollo was with you when you were tanning in summer and while you were sick, stuck in bed. Persephone is in the crunchy leaves on the side of the road in autumn and in the petals that fall from the trees in summer, Hestia is in the warm blanket you cover yourself with on a cold December night, Athena is with you when you try to study for your test and Ares is proud when you stand up for yourself and others. Aphrodite and her son Eros are proud of when you feel love, be it for family, platonic or anything else, Hera is with you when your family hugs you, Artemis, Selene and Hekate watch over you at night and Hekate was beside you when you started making potions with mud or with shampoo and conditioner in the bathtub. When you pay for something Hermes is with you. When you sing, dance, play an instrument, write a poem, draw and act the Muses and Apollon are guiding you. When you remain fascinated by a cathedral Athena and Apollon are proud because that is in their domains! Look at you go, Zeus is with you with the rain that helps you fall asleep and Apollon is proud whenever you take your medicine. When you are scared Phobos is next to you, because fear is a primal emotion. Apollon and Hestia were with you while you heard your mother's heartbeat from the inside. The gods love you, if you want them to.

[redshoesnblueskies]

from my 2020 Faves & Saves update page:  Fanfic culture, AO3 origins going right back to strikethrough, fandom history.....

SO. MANY. LINKS.

so many goodies under the cut!

these are all links to my tumblr - i did not write very many of them, but i know my links will remain the same and not be lost :)

The master post of upholding and celebrating fanfic, by @inkandcayenne :

‘I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/621654927974055936/inkandcayenne-tywinning-asked-you-2012-08-09

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HISTORY OF FANDOM CULTURE FROM LJ TO AO3

'What you are doing when you say “If you don’t want crit, don’t post your story” is gatekeeping, and in a REALLY harmful way. Without fans creating work (fanfiction or art or meta), there is no fandom. You’re not only saying “you can’t be in fandom if you don’t want to be hurt” you’re actively calling for fandom to be cut down. That’s a bad thing. Fandom needs creator content in order to exist and grow.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/186058432379/so-if-youve-watched-my-general-meltdown-about

Foz: straight dudes of the world…read fanfic:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230785234/fozmeadows-totallyevillisa

foz: on depression and hurt/comfort

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230730609/on-depression-and-hurtcomfort

fantastic Foz posts from a while ago, addressing the ‘well just censor content and then you’re not godless heathens’ fallacy…

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230530849/fantastic-foz-posts-from-a-while-ago-addressing

Fanfiction & Capitalism, and Why I Think They Are Related [TW for homophobia, mentions of sexual violence, capitalism]

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230748619/fanfiction-capitalism-and-why-i-think-they-are

Fair use is authorized by law

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230721574/fyeahcopyright-heidi8-fair-use-is-wholly

fantastic breakdown of the sociology that led from LJ community culture to tumblr anonymous disconnected culture:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/611096897406615552/kanna-ophelia-taraljc-kanna-ophelia

'The Places Fandom Dwells: A cautionary Tale’ - EXCELLENT, LOTS OF LINKS

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179355549419/the-places-fandom-dwells-a-cautionary-tale

'It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/173587593934/bonehandledknife-feynites-theskaldspeaks

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BIG AO3 POSTS - HISTORY OF FANDOM

great breakdown of stats on how HUGE AO3 actually is…

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230519234/why-are-people-still-up-in-arms-about-ao3-needing

another breakdown of how huge AO3 is & intricate skills required to run it

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179336300829/hey-ao3-can-you-like-give-the-extra-38k-you-made

AO3 is in the top 300 biggest websites in the WORLD/how a huge site like this works

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230400619/hey-ao3-can-you-like-give-the-extra-38k-you-made

origin story of AO3 - very sweet  (10th anniversary of AO3)

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230398054/on-the-ao3-all-these-years-later

this blogger remembers when we didn’t have AO3

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179391607249/this-blog-is-unrepentantly-pro-ao3

adults built fandom - who runs cons? who runs AO3 & the legal team at OTW? codes the servers?

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179430883009/naryaflame-vanimore-askragtatter-rsasai

“AO3 IS OUR SITE.  It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags.”

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/188239677029/purge-of-2002-of-2012-what-are-those

'Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/165199049719/rapacityinblue-kaciart-rocket-sith

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FANDOM HISTORY & CULTURE

copperbadge - fandom dad explains concrit & why it’s not welcome without specific request

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/186983936704/question-as-an-oldster-and-fandom-lurker-since

fanfic/fanart is a gift - respect it in the way you respect something freely given

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/187512037844/trickztr-friendly-reminder-that-fan-made

'Toxic Fandom: Chen Criticism and Entitlement Go Too Far’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179392060549/toxic-fandom-when-criticism-and-entitlement-go

an explanation of the anti’s as very damaged authoritarianism

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230513414/freedom-of-fanfic-freedom-of-fanfic

why do fangirls always make them gay?

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/162428018414/why-do-fangirls-always-make-them-gay

fandom history through the ages and across continents

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/129594965539/teashoesandhair-ogress-jhameia

one of several versions of a HUGE history post educating people on why we need a non-censored AO3 & why this is vital (and how misinformed many fans are)

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230393414/theothersarshi-redshoesnblueskies

another version: https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/173741270214/grison-in-space-veronica-rich

conversation on AO3 tagging (plus being screwed by censorship

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179391926284/except-that-no-one-uses-tags-like-fetishized

how AO3 is run by volunteer & how to volunteer yourself

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230390519/in-kind

Ao3 fund drive post that goes into why they don’t censor

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230054009/anarfea-anarfea-people-keep-asking-how-can

what 'Archive of Our Own’ refers to

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179136825394/what-archive-of-our-own-refers-to

AO3’s transparent financial reporting & a good rant

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179136341494/ao3-donation-drive

a short explanation of LJ strikethrough

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179124456874/telarna-meeedeee-bomberqueen17-i-just

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LIGHTER FARE

origin of the ! - the “bang path’ in fandom pairings :D

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/118991314994/hey-whats-up-with-the-in-fandoms-ie-fat

can we PLEASE have an AO3 rating system for books & media?? pleeeeease???  here’s some thoughts on how:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/119377580254/crowd-sourced-content-warnings-at-book-stores

LJ was my initial experience of examining how fic fits into these huge gaps left by conventional writing, media and daily IRL conversation/education - the kind of healing that fic can bring to both individuals and a collective body of both knowledge and healthy questioning of assumptions about sexuality as a whole.  I mean, the kind of absolutely common place knowledge about consent, power dynamics, experimentation to determine what one’s own sexuality looks like, and the the options available is extraordinary.  To have that breadth and depth of knowledge presented in an often beautifully creative format; where you could discuss with the author and other readers anything included in the fic and what it meant to both literature and real life, as well as all things fannish that one’s wild imagination could come up with…. good god what I would have given for that information as a teen.  

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/122835116349/bonehandledknife-redshoesnblueskies

Fandom Is…. (poem)

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/124514359704/fandom-is-focus-fandom-is-obsession-fandom-is

Can fandom bring back the concept of a squick? Pleeeease?

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/126342903959/can-fandom-bring-back-the-concept-of-a-squick

'so don’t pretend it can’t be done, author dudes, because there’s a million fangirls who can write lyric filthy devastating character-revealing plot-advancing poetic tender wall-slamming trope-inverting panting sweaty trope-embracing aching crying sex…..and can do it far far better than you.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/124171180589/sex-is-hard-to-write-about-because-you-lose-the

'It’s just fanfic…’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/126188502159/its-just-fan-fic

“Ship means something you want to see happen.” Bitch, no it don’t.

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179234734799/pyrebomb-ship-means-something-you-want-to-see

why can you sell fanart, but not fanfic??

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/128782763684/legal-side-of-tumblr-can-you-answer-me-a

humor: different types of fanfic - in graphics:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/129402064267/justanotherfmablog-yougothenigo

THE SUFFERING ARTIST CONCEPT IS BULLSHIT AND SHOULD BE BLOWTORCHED:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/186461152949/zendarkwalkerx-magicianmew-katiecrenshaw

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/166161827744/if-one-more-person-says-what-if-theyd-medicated

.

IF YOU’VE MADE IT THIS FAR, YOU DESERVE STARSHIPS (SCROLL DOWN):

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/138038043884/samati-saathi1013-tygermama-zillah975

[emilieautumnarchives]

October 2, 2001

Archived from EAOnline

Greetings again, I hope you have all been hanging in there and doing well. I've been performing as usual, with a few program changes to reflect the times, namely, the regular addition of "By The Sword" and the "Star Spangled Banner." My live band has learned BTS with excellent speed and so well that, in a recent concert review, it was named as the most polished song in the set. As for the "Star Spangled…," that continues to be a nerve-wracking song to play as it relies heavily on the audience to make it come off right. In an odd Time like this, one never knows what sort of reaction the national anthem will get, but I am counting on our collective need to give our country a hug and it hasn't failed yet. What I would most like to do right now is to play for those who have been directly victimized by the recent attacks, those in hospitals, those without a place to go. If there is any way to simply go to these people and play my violin for an hour or two, giving them the comfort and human soul that instrument can magically impart, you can bet I will find it.

In my previous post, I'd gone on a short rant about the necessity of creativity in these harsh Times. Thus, I was thrilled to receive a submission to the Board by a visitor to the site, a very beautiful poem. I encourage all to send me their creations, be it random thoughts, poetry, essays, artwork, etc., and I will do my best to post them and share them with other visitors via this Board. Following is the poem I received, may you all enjoy it. My thanks to its author, Rasheed.

Concierto de Aranjuez by Rasheed, 4-23-01, 1:02 am

Explanation: This is more about a girl I used to know than it is about music. I left this poem on her blue car one day and never got to talk to her about it until two months later, when we were on a park bench alone with July night & moon & friends in the distance that stayed in the distance. There are 11 syllables in each line because i like the image of the two 1's standing together: two individuals, like me and her! There is one meaning accessible to readers and another hidden meaning of which only the three of us (she, I, bent finger of first-quarter moon watching from the universe) know. I haven't talked to or seen her since then, and I don't think I ever will.

Concierto de Aranjuez

We've listened to this adagio before. You sat across from me on our holy bus, brown corduroy jacket wrapped around your waist, Vita Nuova bashfully in your hand,

CD's in your backpack that we traded, listened to at night, ruminated over. We told each other that our music was good, and that we were good, and that our souls were good,

and that the world and its soul were also good. Rodrigo has a way with the guitar; he can make it heavenly even surrounded by thick patches of cold bus speaker static.

One night I listened to him, violin in my arms, and fell asleep blear-eyed and dizzy, drunk with so much light. It seems things have changed now- now that you've grown up and I've failed to do so,

now that you hide from the humble reflection of my eyes reflecting your eyes reflecting the world and all of its lonely, half-dead eyes, now that the half-hour eternities of bus-

ride conversations are relegated to some unvisited fragment in our sad minds, now that you've become the society drone we'd convinced each other we'd never become.

You gave in, bought the clothes the empty people wear, and got rid of your corduroy jacket. Dante became old and shallow, the way he rambled. And Rodrigo, well, it was time to move on.

In autumn, desire-bodies died with trees, were shed like purposeless dismal leaves, and burned. I thought it would be you and I storming the city from the outskirts and breaking every

fucking neon sign and streetlight and motor until it was just the two of us standing and existing under the sky and stars, the rest of existence blurring and cancelling out.

When did you forget that Rodrigo and Dante were beautiful? When did you forget that you and your soul were beautiful? We didn't need to grow up and see the world growing with us,

we needed an adagio like this one, a Rodrigo adagio, to wake us and let us know that we were never empty like the dim city or its dim people, that

we were glowing brighter with each passing day. It was our adagio, our caravan barrelling into the dawn, by the will of the love which moves the sun and the other stars.

I have a million and one things to do so I am signing off for the moment, but thanks for reading, listening, and being strong. Very special thanks to all of you who have purchased "By The Sword."

Until next Time,

EA

[andtheny]

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Chapter 5: Wind

Be a leaf in the wind they said

You can't pave a road empty handed

But wind is scarce and hard to see

I'll be a boat instead

There are still waters up ahead

I'll paddle with my hands if I have to

I'll be a leisure cruise

Just some fun

For a month or two

I'll be a raft

Not built to last

But you can rant

Or I'll be a canoe

On a sunny day

When your lover’s away

I'll be empty on Valentine's day

Sure, I may have sprung a few leaks

But don't worry

I won't let you get wet, baby

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[urfavmurtad]

Hi! in one of your posts u said: "infanticide, either female or otherwise, was not a common practice in pre-Islamic Arabia." can you please link me to some sources for that? i'd be forever grateful xxx

Anon I just finished one of my final papers and now I’m in a ranting mood and what a GREAT topic for ranting you have brought up. It’s a perfect example of how pre-Islamic Arabia has gotten shat upon for the better part of 1400 years because people, mostly their own descendants, have decided that they were all evil savages. Ask anyone who was raised Muslim, even if they’re no longer practicing, for a fact about “Jahiliyya” and you’ll be told “they buried their daughters”. I think pretty much everyone with even a month of Islamic education, myself included, has been taught that this was a routine and widespread occurrence that Islam stopped. Even non-Muslim people have probably heard of this.

It’s repeated so frequently that few people ever bother to look up where the accusation comes from and what evidence supports it, outside of Islamic texts. Let’s see. There wasn’t a ton of writing before the 7th century, but are there any surviving fragments that mention it? Hm… nope. Maybe it was mentioned in the works of some travelers or foreign writers? Not there, either. How about references to it from neighboring literate peoples, like the Byzantines and Persians, who saw the Arabs south of the Ghassanid/Lakhmid lands as backwards anyway and surely wouldn’t have minded reporting on such a practice? Or even the Christian Arabs to the immediate north? Nope. Well, the gender ratio must’ve been screwed up, isn’t there at least evidence of that? No? Fine, but surely there is at least some archaeological evidence of this? There must be lots of bones of female infants that people have uncovered, right? Uh… no.

I mean… okay, but there must be something, somewhere in the peninsula, from some time before Islam that mentions this, right?! Well, in fact there is one piece of pre-Islamic historical evidence that may concern this subject in the Arabian Peninsula. From between the fifth and the second century BC. In Yemen. It was not written in Arabic, as at the time Yemenis still spoke their own South Arabian language (called Sabaean). Nonetheless, let’s look at what the devious people of Jahiliyya were up to. It was codified that:

It is unlawful for anyone of the people of Matarat to kill his daughter.

…that, uh, it was illegal for people kill their daughters. Over 700 years before Mohammed was born. The linked article points out that the word can also be used to mean female relatives of any age, not only infant daughters, so it seems to have been a general prohibition against killing any female members of one’s family. There are fatwas throughout Islamic history that say the same thing, so we can’t even be generous and say “maybe the fact that this exists means it was socially acceptable beforehand?”.

So the only pre-Islamic evidence we have relating to any form of female-targeted killings comes from hundreds of years before Mohammed’s time, in a different part of Arabia, and it explicitly outlaws the practice. Now look, I’m not saying that infanticide didn’t happen at all, as it certainly did both in pre- and post-Islamic Arabia, in times of great hardship. But for such a supposedly widespread practice afflicting the entire race before Islam miraculously invented feminism and stopped it overnight, is it not a tad strange that no one of any civilization over the span of a thousand years bothered to mention it before Mohammed? And isn’t it kind of weird how there isn’t any record of even a single named person engaging in this practice outside of Islamic texts written in the 800s AD onwards, long after polytheism was no longer practiced? (And as I’ll show later, barely anyone is named even in those texts…)

At any rate, given that every single accusation about Arabs practicing widespread and specifically female infanticide comes from Islamic sources, I suppose we should look at what they actually say on this matter, even though Mohammed’s views of his contemporary polytheists were not exactly, shall we say, neutral and unbiased. I’ll explain why I find them unconvincing in terms of evidence that this was a common practice. This is going to be long! I’m putting this under a cut bc I think probably… five people in total on this entire site care??

Let’s deal with the Quran first. Infanticide is mentioned in four places: 81:8-9, 6:151, 17:31, and 16:58-59. 6:151 (it’s also mentioned a bit before that in surah 6 too but that one just says that it’s Allah’s will, so :|) and 17:31 do not mention daughters specifically and simply tell people not to kill their children because they are poor and starving and don’t have enough food to go around (which was the context of most cases of infanticide throughout world history).

So let’s take a look at the two that are actually about girls. The context of 16:58-59 is Mohammed complaining that the polytheists say that Allah has daughters (the trio of sister-goddesses popular in the Hijaz at the time). 16:58 has Mohammed saying that when one of the polytheists themselves finds out his newborn is a girl, he gets angry, and in 16:59 he has the imaginary polytheist wondering if he should bury the newborn “in the dust”. This is meant to convey that the polytheists disgrace Allah by giving him daughters when they don’t even want them themselves. It’s similar to 43:16-19, which does not mention infanticide but does complain that the polytheists claim that angels are female while being displeased with their own daughters.

(I feel like I’ve repeated this a thousand times, but Islamic sources themselves describe literate women, highly-revered female medics, successful female business owners, women in monogamous marriages, female clan leaders, women who inherited and distributed property, women who chose their own husbands, widows and single mothers working in respected professions, women who were on battlefields, and women leading thousands of troops in this era. The idea that non-Muslim Arabs in Mohammed’s time uniformly loathed women and routinely buried their own daughters is completely nonsensical even judging by solely Islamic sources and it’s absolutely bizarre that this perception still stands. Y’all they were a polygamous society and women seemed to outnumber men, not the other way around. I know some people think “if the Quran says it, it must be true!” but lookit, Alexander the Great did not have horns on his head and pre-Islamic Arabs were not all baby-killing savages, them’s the facts.)

In any case, the ayah actually just says the evildoing polytheists think of doing it because they want sons… not that they do it. Nor does it say that Mohammed has ever seen it happen. It seems highly unlikely that he ever personally witnessed such a thing in Mecca, as even the guys the Quran calls evil by name like Crazy Uncle Abu Lahab had daughters. I’ll also add that some noted Quranic commentators say the phrase “bury [her] in the dust” could be a metaphor meaning “to hide [her] out of sight”, because the first word can also mean “conceal”. But let me talk about the other verses now.

Hold on because the next one’s got a plot twist. Surah 81, At-Takwir, is one of those poetic ones about the end of the world, about the stars falling and seas being set on fire etc. 81:8-9 is part of this poem and says “And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked/For what sin she was killed”.

The phrase translated as “the girl [who was] buried alive” is all one word, l-mawuda, stemming from a root used only in this ayah. It is evidently meant to refer to one killed via “wad”, meaning (in this case apparently) infanticide. So the word would mean, as literally as possible, “infant (girl) who was killed”. However!!

This verse is mentioned in one sahih hadith, which is… not actually about infanticide at all, but is instead about the practice of “azl”, which is the pull-out method, inexplicably called a form of infanticide (wad al-khafi–hidden infanticide, or “secret (way of) burying alive” as this translation puts it).

Then they asked him about ‘azl, whereupon he said “That is the secret (way of) burying alive”, and Ubaidullah has made this addition in the hadith transmitted by al-Muqri and that is: “When the one buried alive is asked[…] (81:8)”

Where might Mohammed have gotten such an idea? Why, I do believe this other sahih hadith has the answer. Someone informs Mohammed that Jews say that Every Sperm is Sacred (they call it mawudat al-sughra, minor infanticide. While the translation of mawuda as “girl buried alive” is standard now, it is clearly meant more in a general infanticide sense here… it’s not implying the dudes are literally burying their semen in the ground). Mohammed, who does not like Ze Jews, declares them liars. Despite the fact that they are saying literally exactly what he said in that other hadith.

The Jews say that withdrawing the penis (azl) is burying the living girls on a small scale. He (the Prophet) said: The Jews told a lie.

This blatant contradiction in two sahih ahadith has puzzled scholars throughout history and has largely been completely brushed over despite the former (from Sahih Muslim) coming from the most conservative of all the ahadith collections and being repeated by other collectors.Many scholars throughout history have just said “yeah, well, that can’t be right because that’d mean that the prophet contradicted himself!”. Which…  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s what I think happened. As with many things in his Mecca days, Mohammed based his understanding on azl on what the Jews said (see: the qiblah switch). Then he got to Medina and realized, oh, the Jews are actually garbage and we should stop imitating them. So when Muslims ask him whether he agrees with the Jews on the subject of azl, he forcefully declares that he does not, despite the fact that… he did. This is, in fact, an accepted explanation for the contradiction: the one where he calls azl infanticide is early, based on what the Jews believed, and was abrogated later once Allah “revealed” that it wasn’t true. And surah 81 is a Meccan surah, meaning it was from the period before he started loathing Jews, and his own followers connected his view on azl with the verse in question!

Anyway… that’s it for the Quran on this subject. I think I’ve explained why I find it pretty much impossible to believe that Arabs commonly murdered their infant daughters based solely on those verses. But of course, we have other sources that mention infanticide. So let’s do some other ahadith learnin’. For the sake of brevity (lol…) I am going to mainly focus on the sahih collections and will not go into any ahadith with da’if/weak narrators or traditions that appear out of nowhere in like the 10th century+ bc what’s even the point.

I think many Muslims would be surprised by how rarely this subject is mentioned in the sahih collections. There is only one hadith within them alleging any infanticide in Mecca itself, and it is this one narrated by Abu Bakr’s daughter Asma (through her son Urwa and his son Hisham).

I saw Zaid bin Amr bin Nufail standing with his back against the Ka'ba and saying, “O people of Quraish! By Allah, none amongst you is on the religion of Abraham except me.” He used to preserve the lives of little girls: If somebody wanted to kill his daughter he would say to him, “Do not kill her for I will feed her on your behalf.” So he would take her, and when she grew up nicely, he would say to her father, “Now if you want her, I will give her to you, and if you wish, I will feed her on your behalf.”

I’ll be straight with you: I do not believe this. Not in the sense that I don’t believe Asma said it, but in the sense that I don’t believe her actual words.

Zayd ibn Amr, for those of you who don’t know, was a man of Mecca (he was Umar’s cousin on one side and Umar’s uncle on the other–don’t practice incest, kids!) who died a bit before Mohammed became a “prophet”. Because he eschewed polytheism, Christianity, and Judaism in favor of some vague Abrahamic tradition, he was sort of retroactively declared a Muslim and all sorts of legends about his life were made up to portray him as a pious and righteous proto-Muslim. Mohammed claimed that he met him by chance at some point and discovered that Zayd happened to follow the same dietary rules that “Allah” would later instruct Mohammed to follow. I guess he is vaguely comparable to John the Baptist in the Christian tradition? Like a predecessor pious guy (who is killed… not because of persecution, though, robbers just shanked him).

Anyway, Asma was like… 10 years old at most when Zayd died, and he had been away on trading business at the time of his death, so it’s a bit unclear what the timeline is here, if it did happen. She would have been 5-8, I guess. And so here is my question: where, exactly, are these girls that he “saved”? She says that he raised multiple young girls, keeping some with him and later returning others to their families. These girls would have been between Asma and Aisha in age and, presumably, some would have been older than Asma.

So what happened to them? Where are they? Why are they never mentioned again?

Not a single one of these girls he supposedly cared for is ever named or referenced. This happened in Mecca, in a well-known family. Zayd’s own children, Saeed and Atiqa, were Muslims quoted in various ahadith. (Saeed was married to Umar’s sister, incidentally, and was part of Umar’s whole anime-ass backstory. Atiqa was a wife of Umar himself and had a rather scandalous personal history, but that’s irrelevant. Point is, neither had anything to say about their father rescuing or raising any kids of either gender.)

Given how young Asma was and how no one, not even Zayd’s own kids, corroborates her account, I tend to look at her words here with some skepticism. If they existed, the women who were “saved” by Zayd as infants would have become Muslims by or before the conquest of Mecca, and at least one of them would have been quoted or just mentioned in some hadith, somewhere. But they weren’t, and imo it’s because this is not something that really happened and is instead just a demonstration of early Islamic myth-making. The same trope is repeated in later and weaker sources, like some poetry attributed to al-Farazdaq claims that his grandfather raised 66 (!!!) girls he “saved”, who would presumably have been the same age as his parents, but does he name a single damn one of them or name the individuals who he “saved” them from? Nope. Just like Zayd’s mysterious disappearing foster daughters, the girls disappear from the story right after they stop being needed to prove a point. Hm.

There are no other recorded instances of specific people in Mecca either practicing or stopping infanticide. In the interest of fairness, despite my loathing for the guy, I must note that a semi-popular story about Umar burying his daughters is fabricated. Umar obviously had many daughters, his eldest being one of Mohammed’s own wives, who was not only not killed but even received an education and was literate.

The only other sahih hadith on this subject is this one, which just lists various bad things and is similar to 6:151. Again, no specific incidents are mentioned. The term used here is “wad al-banat”, meaning presumably the infanticide (wad) of daughters (banat).

Verity Allah, the Glorious and Majestic, has forbidden for you: disobedience to mothers, and burying alive daughters … (etc)

Nothing further is said of this supposedly common practice in any other sahih hadith. Zero people are accused of partaking in this practice, zero people confess to having done it, no one mentions having a murdered sister or aunt or daughter. And judging by the marriage practices of early Islam, there sure doesn’t seem to have been a gender ratio issue.

With this total dearth of evidence in mind, some Islamic scholars over the centuries have relented on the polytheists somewhat, proposing that female infanticide was a rarer practice than some claim in settled areas, but was still practiced somewhere by some tribe. (This is not just a modern practice: they were in the minority, but there were some 9th century scholars like al-Mubarrad who were explicitly skeptical of the baby-killing days of Jahiliyya.) Usually the Bedouin living outside the Hijaz are blamed because, you know, lol silly desert nomads. Even this requires relying on weaker traditions, though. So hey since this is turning into a goddamn dissertation, let’s dive into them!!

First, let me get this one out of the way: Qays ibn Asim, evidently a leader of the Banu Tamim tribe. If you’ve heard any specific person identified with the practice of female infanticide, it’s probably him. There are all sorts of versions of his story, though most of them go like this.

That story says that his tribe was raided by a Lakhmid (Iraqi) king, who took the women as slaves. Eventually the women were returned once peace was negotiated between the parties, but one of them, the daughter of Qays, refused to come home because she wanted to stay with her Lakhmid husband. After that, Qays buried all girls born to his wife, to avoid such a dishonorable thing happening again in the future. Sometimes it’s said there were 8 girls, other times it’s said there were 12. After he converted to Islam, he confessed and repented by sacrificing some of his camels. (Often this is presented as the first case of female infanticide among Arabs, which does… not… make much sense, timeline-wise?)

I suppose it goes without saying that while the Banu Tamim are mentioned (sometimes in a derogatory way, other times in a nice or neutral way) in the six main ahadith collections, this story is not found in any of them… in fact, Qays himself narrates some sahih ahadith and never bothers to mention that he’s apparently killed a dozen babies. Hmmm. Where does the story come from, then?

As far as I can tell, the bare bones of it come from al-Tabarani (he was of the generation of ahadith collectors after Bukhari et al; this book in particular has tens of thousands of ahadith of varying levels of authenticity, many of which are clearly weak), apparently quoting from Nouman ibn Bashir, who says he heard it from Umar (thus the confusion over Umar supposedly killing one of his children).

All that hadith says is that he buried 8 daughters; the other details about his tribe being attacked etc come from weaker/fabricated sources. There’s a variant of the story in which Qays’ wife saves one girl and (somehow??) brings her up on her own and Qays is devastated and shamed of his deeds when he sees her, which appears to be pulled from a fabricated account about some other guy named Awf ibn Muhallam. Neither account is considered sahih or even credible. The same is true of a ridiculous story from Sunan al-Darimi (Google Translate is shit at Arabic but I can’t find an English version, you can at least get the general idea, the unnamed guy says he kicked his daughter down a well as she screamed out for him!) that some people may have heard which is, again, never stated to be authentic and not found in any other collections; the details in that last one are quite clearly meant to demonize polytheists as shockingly as possible.

I searched and searched for the most credible possible account mentioning a specific incident of infanticide, and I think this one here comes closest. It is a hasan hadith from one of Bukhari’s commentaries. This is not Sahih Bukhari–this commentary has ahadith ranging from daif to sahih (weak to strong, hasan is pretty much “okay”). The guy evidently says he killed a daughter (“wadt mawudatan”, translate that as you will) in pre-Islamic times and asks Abu Dhar if he can repent. Abu Dhar says it’s fine because Allah forgives what has been done before Islam… then starts arguing with his wife about food and this hadith is classified under the chapter about giving guests food… the apparent infanticide being totally forgotten for the remainder of the hadith. Weird.

There’s a variant of this story with different wording in one of Imam Ahmed’s collections (#20376), with a different narration chain. The word mawudatan is not present–“wadt” وأدت is in fact without an object there. It’s possible it’s not talking about infanticide at all but rather using the word with a different definition to indicate being a leading participant in polytheistic practices. But… uh. That’s the best I can do here. One guy, and not from a source that’s considered super authentic.

There are no other even sort-of-reputable sources mentioning female infanticide. That’s it. In the entire history of pre-Islamic Arabia, that is the extent of the evidence for “Arabs always used to bury their daughters alive!!”. As you can see, the evidence that this was a common practice is… not convincing in the least, and the conflation between infanticide and splooging outside a vagina is confusing and not helping matters. In summary, please leave our ancestors alone!! They went through enough shit without ppl painting them as baby-killing monsters based on zero non-Islamic sources and barely any Islamic sources either. I’m just asking y’all to evaluate claims of them being evil with the same skepticism you’d grant claims of pagan Europeans being called evil by Christian sources. The fact that we’ve all been taught this “fact” is unfortunate but I hope I’ve convinced you that the practice at least wasn’t as common as it’s presented in the modern era.

I guess we may follow the prophet’s example and blame the Jews for this confusion. And Allah knows best.

[just-another-winchester]

My Supernatural Origin Story!

I know it’s getting close to the time where everyone goes to bed, so I wanna send you all goodnight messages in thanks.

I had no clue when I started watching Supernatural that I would meet so many wonderful people. I want to explain to you what happened, if you are interested, read on! If no, then that’s fine, there are thanks beneath the cut as well.

I will honestly be amazed if you guys don’t get bored reading this.

I am a strong advocate of sharing the love. And that is something I haven’t come in contact with a lot.

My family is not physically loving people, I am a person who enjoys physical love. And no, I do not mean sex, I mean hugs, cuddles, kisses. Stuff like that, and my family, they don’t do that, especially now that I am an adult, they think I shouldn’t need it.

I got my first job when I was 17. I was hired as a Crew Member at McDonalds. I worked from 11 am to 4 pm most days, the only day I always had off was Sunday.

I loved my job, I got along well with my co workers mostly, and the customers were generally not that bad. I was very new to the world since I had been home schooled most of my life, so I generally had a positive opinion of everything, even when I dealt with a rude or mean customer, I shrugged it off and thought, ‘oh well’

When winter came around I switched my hours to full time because I wasn’t willing to walk in the cold.I worked 6 am to 2 pm. I slowly became more and more exhausted, less willing to do things. Before I knew it winter was over, but I liked my paycheck, so I kept the hours.

The job and the people slowly began to weigh me down, I was always exhausted, and I didn’t want to do anything.

Finally, in March of 2016, my grandmother passed away while I was at work. I have never experienced a worse feeling than when my brother, who was working there as well at the time, came up to me and told me that my grandmother was gone.

My grandma was my rock, she was my happy place, when I went to her house, all was well with the world, I was allowed to be a child, I goofed off and had fun. It was grandma’s house, but it was home.

When she passed, that was when my world came crashing down. Anxiety and depression set it, something I had never dealt with before. I was always a cheerful kid, while my brother and cousins had a song that my grandma would sing to them, I had my own special song, You Are My Sunshine, because I was always happy.

After I lost her, that song was a bitter reminder of what I wasn’t anymore.

I finally ended up leaving the job on good terms after a panic attack. My GM had anxiety issues as well so she was very kind and understanding.

I began looking for a job after a few months, and it was a struggle to find one, no one was hiring, but I couldn’t go back to McDonalds. It was just too much stress, I needed to ease into something, not go back to what caused a lot of problems in the first place.

Finally, I came to a book bindary that had employed my older brother over the summer for the past three years as summer help for college kids.

I wasn’t in college, but I was hired on full time as a processor. Ya know the stickers, bar codes and such you see on library books? That’s what I did. Seems easy right? It was, for the most part.

The problem was speed. We had a quota, and for me, someone who needs to take her time otherwise I’ll screw up everything, that was problematic.

Is was here though, that I found friends. Good friends. I had my first ever girls night out with a couple of the women from this job.

This was the start of Supernatural for me.

I saw one of my coworkers wearing a shirt with the words Carry On My Wayward Son, and a sillhouette of Sam and Dean. I didn’t know about Kansas, but I had heard the song before, so I asked if that was the band.

Then, low and behold, the community gathered around! Okay, so it was only three people at the time. But it still counts!

They said it was a shirt for this show called Supernatural. I’ve always been interested in creepy sorts of stuff, so I asked what it was about.

After it was explained to me, I decided it sounded interesting. I was curious, and wanted to know more. 

I had been in the middle of watching Prison Break, and decided when I was finished with that, Supernatural was next on my list, because I was needing something to watch anyway.

A couple weeks later, I was fired. Unfairly by my opinion, and the opinion of all of my co workers.

They all found it unfair, my co worker Teresa, she trained me, she had told me for a fact that I was not the slowest person there, and the problem was, I was fired because they said I was just too slow.

I had been happy while at this job. But when I was fired, the depression set back in, I was sad, and discouraged.

Then I remembered Supernatural. I decided, I had plenty of free time, let’s check it out!!

I looked up a trailer for the first season, and... I loved it. I don’t remember my original thoughts or feelings exactly, I just thought it looked interesting. So I said Yes to the dress!

I found the first episode, and watched it, and before I knew it the seasons were flying by.

I’m a lot like Sam, but I’m more of a Dean girl, because there is nothing I love more than a big brother. Dean’s entire personality made me wanna cling to him.

I cried, I laughed, I got angry, I got happy. The show was my solace in a way, it made me happy, it made me forget the crap that was happening.

I had already been on a writing site, and as I was finishing the first season, I decided I wanted to roleplay. I created a character, that I, to this day, am very proud of. Her name was Hali.

Through this character I got out all my feelings, all my bad negative thoughts and emotions. I worked them through her, I became Hali when I was alone, I turned myself into her and used her to work my way through my struggles, through my hurt.

My first encounter with a member of the supernatural family was @blue-heaven-winchestergirl83. I roleplayed with her where my character was Hali, and hers was a nephilim named Kass, who was easily incredible.

I rped through the rest of my time watching, right up until the season 13 premiere, and I loved it. Carmine was and is my friend. She guided me through the beginning of my love of Supernatural.

There wasn’t too much love for the show there however. I wanted to read more! Especially, Dean smut. Cause I mean... come on, this guy.

And so, I searched on google for some links to fanfiction, it always led me to tumblr when I was interested in 5sos or 1d fics, but I had never been interested in tumblr, it was just... confusing to me. I didn’t understand it, and I am not fond of new things.

Finally, I read through all of @theinsandoutsofcastiel masterlist. OH MY GOD I loved it all, so I finally decided to start using it.

I had already created a tumblr previously, but hardly used it because I wasn’t much into what I had created it for.

I logged on, and we were in business.

I wrote a fic, that was honestly so many kinds of bad that I am probably going to end up taking it down and rewriting it. But with that, spawned something.

The first memorable encounter I had was with @impala-dreamer, I started following her cause I liked that she said Castiel was her patronous, I thought she was funny. Then I got through her masterlist and I decided she was also pretty damn cool.

I loved her and her work, so, one day I sent an ask, wondering if she would review one of my fics, and she did, and it gave me hope.

She helped me through a lot of things, she was patient with me, and kind to me. Even though I know I annoyed the crap out of her, because I annoy the crap out of myself.

With Beka, I learned a lot about tumblr, I became more comfortable with it. I joined a couple challenges, and that got me more likes and followers. She reblogged my fic, I believe it was about removing plastic from a turkey. 

I made a post, telling her about how grateful I was to her. And from that, came Amanda.

I don’t even remember how @amanda-teaches and I fully began talking, unsure which of us started it, but it doesn’t matter, cause Amanda, she’s my people. She is a constant ray of sunshine and I love her with all my tiny little heart.

She beta’s my fics, she helps me through them, she lets me rant at her about ideas, and she’s just so incredibly patient with me. She is still, and hopefully always will be, one of my closest friends.

@queen-of-deans-booty is another one I don’t fully remember meeting, I remember loving her so much, she was so sweet and I just loved her writing. I left her an anon ask, I was getting down on myself, and she was kind and patient with me, she told me it was safe to come off anon, and then, she allowed me to put her on my Dream Team, or forevers list.

She reblogged and commented on the first chapter of my series You’re Not Alone. I still read that on bad days, to remind me that I can still do good.

With that, came a flood of love. It spiked me to more followers, more likes, more reblogs. I was more noticed.

I don’t remember how I came to know @katymacsupernatural, but I will never deny it was one of the best things ever. Undeniable Heat was what I found of hers. I loved it, with all my heart, it was incredible and I immediately wanted in. Her story inspired me to write my imaginary world where Jensen and Jared are my honorary brothers, where Dani and Gen are my best friends, and where Misha is just a constant goof of a great friend.

I love writing it, even though Im not comfortable sharing it yet. Her inspiration to write it aided me a lot, she was so incredible, and then one night, she opened her inbox, and I pulled a full frontal attack.

I bombarded her with stupid little poems, goofy things and just me being a dork. I told her I was kidnapping the Winchesters, and for the next few weeks that was just our thing. It made me so happy. She was the first person I was comfortable not doing anon with, because she played along, and made me happy.

And thus struck up that friendship, which, wow... has done more for me than I can say. She and Amanda are what I call my butter pumpkins. And let me tell you, that it the highest honor.

Katy, you are constant and wonderful.

Since then, I have gained more than 200 followers, at this moment I have 243.

I was lucky enough to meet @becs-bunker, @sillesworldofwriting in a way through my fic called Just A Touch, which was a fic I wasn’t even proud of. I got such a roar of feedback from that fic, and it was at a time where I needed it most.

After that I met @thing-you-do-with-that-thing, and I love her to pieces because I see her and I see a strong, and brave person. She reminded me that you don’t have to take crap. She showed me how to stand up for someone, and for myself.

I don’t think I can say enough about the people who have helped me on this site. But to all of you who I have tagged, and will tag.

I’m sorry if I don’t have much to say about you, but you all mean more to me than I can say. Thank you for sharing the love, thank you for being there.

Thank you for helping me feel like family.

The #spnfamily, it’s one of the best things that’s happened to me. Through all the hate I have recieved today, I laugh at it, because I know I have all of you. So thank you.

@manawhaat @polina-93 @cassieraider @dizwinchester @babypieandwhiskey @nightlyinsomnious @cass-trash @ladywinchester1967

And anyone else I may have forgotten. I love you, your support is keeping me going everyday.

You will never know, how much it means.

[getanattitude]

The Next Big Thing in best beginner piano

“THE more you dig into a piece of Ives, the greater pleasure you get from it,” the pianist Jeremy Denk said lately, sitting at a piano inside of a rehearsal space in the Juilliard College. “It’s like resolving a puzzle.”

Then he enthusiastically deconstructed Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, untangling and conveying the themes and motifs embedded inside the complicated textures of the interesting rating.

Mr. Denk is about to release a disc, “Jeremy Denk Performs Ives” (Think Denk Media), showcasing two piano sonatas, an esoteric decision of repertory for a debut solo album. But then, there's nothing generic about this adventurous musician. His vivacious intellect is manifest equally in his actively playing and on his blog site, Think Denk, an outlet for astute musical observations and witty musings, irrespective of whether a lament about inedible meatballs or simply a spoof interview with Sarah Palin.

Mr. Denk will demonstrate his a lot more mainstream credentials when he performs Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. one with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra commencing on Thursday for the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and on Oct. twelve at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Denk argues that the Ives sonatas, composed early during the 20th century, are mistakenly categorized as avant-garde is effective rather than “epic Romantic sonatas with Lisztian thematic transformations.” To your informal listener, the tunes that Mr. Denk describes from the CD booklet as “excellent, inventive, tender, edgy, wild, first, witty, haunting” can certainly audio avant-garde. Ives, who produced his residing in the insurance enterprise, incorporated jazz, riffs on Beethoven and American hymns, marches and people music into his daringly experimental piano sonatas, rich in polytonality, thematic layering and rhythmic complexity.

“It’s so splendidly in-your-facial area,” Mr. Denk explained, demonstrating a very maniacal passage inside the “Concord” Sonata. “It’s also fairly surprisingly hideous. There is one thing maddening about his humorousness. Ives is continually thumbing his nose at you in a way.”

But Mr. Denk implies that Ives’s tenderness, which he illuminates wonderfully With this recording, is underappreciated. “Ives is frequently about factors recalled,” he stated, “or Recollections or visions fetched from some tricky spot.”

He played the harmonically misty passages in the next motion with the “Concord,” in which Ives directs that a piece of Wooden be pressed around the upper keys to create a cluster chord. “It doesn’t feel gimmicky in the least to me,” Mr. Denk reported. “It’s all blues in The underside. Ives understood the best way to use Individuals small clichéd bits of Americana in a method that suddenly gets your intestine. You can’t consider how touching it truly is.”

Mr. Denk, 40, has actually been keen about Ives due to the fact his undergraduate times at Oberlin in Ohio, where he carried a double key in piano functionality and chemistry. “My full double diploma experience was to some degree of the ongoing freakout of 1 form of An additional,” he explained.

He were a “really nerdy high school university student” that has a limited social lifestyle, he claimed. “Ever given that I had been a kid I wished to head to Oberlin and preferred the liberal arts. Clearly I really get intensive enjoyment from drawing connections between items and poems and literature and concepts.”

Mr. Denk described himself to be a “practice maniac,” but his horizons have prolonged much further than the follow space given that Oberlin. Though nibbling an enormous piece of chocolate product pie at an Upper West Aspect diner close to the apartment he has rented considering that around 1999, Mr. Denk referred to his blog site, calling it “an astonishingly very good outlet to release tensions of 1 form or An additional.” He claimed it had drawn new listeners to his concerts. An avid reader of liberal political weblogs, Mr. Denk desires of creating a classical audio version of Wonkette, he said, but that could be tough to do devoid of offending people today. And he attempts to avoid offending folks, he additional, although he did lately post a rant about application notes.

Mr. Denk, who phone calls himself “an actual Francophile,” is soft-spoken but powerful, his dialogue peppered with references to numerous “obsessions”: coffee, Ives, Bach, Proust, Baudelaire and Emerson.

He went off on “a Balzac mania” a couple of years in the past, he claimed.

“That was a hazardous time, and anything in everyday life seemed drawn out of a Balzac novel,” he added. “I missing about a few a long time of my lifestyle to Proust. I’m positive it modified all the things, together with my taking part in.

“Someday my supervisor was like, ‘Dude, You must focus on your career and obtaining your things with each other.’ ” At that point, Mr. Denk claimed, “I was bringing Proust to meetings.” He extra: “I’m unsure I really experienced a job route. I had been just undertaking my Strange factor, which probably gave the impression of a disastrous nonroute to many of the people that ended up observing in excess of me. I don't forget some exasperated meetings with my management, but they were being quite affected individual and devoted, which I’m insanely grateful for.”

Mr. Denk grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., considered one of two brothers, a son of music-loving nonmusician moms and dads. His father, who's got a doctorate in chemistry, has become (at distinct moments) a Roman Catholic monk plus a director of computer science at New Mexico Point out University.

Mr. Denk remains addicted to the chili peppers of Las Cruces, he explained, seemingly only 50 % joking: “The purple as well as the inexperienced and the whole spirituality of chili peppers. It’s however a huge Portion of my lifetime. Once i go dwelling I visit this true dive and obsess more than their inexperienced meat burrito.”

When not on tour, Mr. Denk spends time along with his boyfriend, Patrick Posey, a saxophonist and also the director of orchestral things to do and arranging at Juilliard, the place Mr. Denk been given his doctorate, finding out with Herbert Stessin. Mr. Stessin recalls acquiring been amazed by “the maturity and depth” of Mr. Denk’s actively playing and remembers him as “an extraordinary student who absorbed items quite rapidly.”

Mr. Denk stated he “was in school permanently” right up until “in some unspecified time in the future I decided to have faith in my own instincts.” Now he teaches double-degree undergraduates on the Bard University Conservatory of Songs. The pianist Allegra Chapman, who examined with him, mentioned he was “worried about a great deal much more than the notes on the site, always citing literary and historic references.”

“Now I try and method songs in a extra holistic perspective,” she added. “He may be very passionate. He used to leap within the place and bounce about and wave his arms. It absolutely was genuinely enjoyment. He tried to get me to look at the new music having a sense of humor.”

This blend of enthusiasm, humor and intellect, so vibrant in both of those Mr. Denk’s participating in and his creating, is what distinguishes him, according to the violinist Joshua Bell. The two are actually common duo companions because 2004, whenever they done at the Spoleto Festival United states.

“You receive the intellectual musicians or those that dress in their heart on their sleeve with no lot of musical imagined,” Mr. Bell stated, “but Jeremy manages to accomplish both of those, and that’s great. We have now a good amount of arguments in rehearsal, that's the fun part too. The very fact we don’t generally see eye to eye keeps points clean and helps make me concern every little thing I do.”

Mr. Bell, whose alternatives of repertory are usually more common than All those of his additional adventurous colleague, claimed he wasn’t normally an Ives fan: “That has a good deal of modern audio I’m a little bit cautious. Despite having Ives, right until I listened to Jeremy. He just provides it alive. He has such an incredible creativity, and very little is completed randomly.”

Ives’s piano sonatas, Mr. Denk reported, “are in a method like animals that don’t wish to be tamed.”

“Every single overall performance needs to be so distinctive,” he extra, a single rationale he was originally hesitant to record them. Like Bach, he said, Ives leaves a good deal to the performer’s imagination.

A marvelous interpretation of your “Goldberg” Versions at Symphony House in 2008 unveiled Mr. Denk’s profound affinity with Bach. Mr. Denk will perform the get the job done and Textbooks one and 2 of Ligeti’s Études at Zankel Corridor on Feb. 16.

To help keep the “Goldberg” Versions contemporary, Mr. Denk is incorporating new fingerings, he claimed, “to reactivate the link amongst my brain and my fingers After i’m participating in it.”

“I think it’s an actual magical area If you have the muscle mass memory,” he extra, “even so the brain is in advance with the fingers.”

Modifying the fingerings is one way to keep away from plan, he claimed. “I get real pleasure outside of producing in a really great fingering. It can be like relearning the piece, and it makes you not just take any Observe for granted.”

The musical philosophy Mr. Denk relates to Bach, Ives as well as other repertory is maybe ideal summed up in that site put up on program notes: “I’ve in no way been a major enthusiast of the ‘Visualize how innovative this piece was when it had been created’ school of inspiration. For my money, it should be groundbreaking now. (And it is actually.) Whichever else the composer may have supposed, they didn’t want you to Assume, ‘Boy, that should are actually interesting back then.’ The most simple compositional intent, absolutely the ur-intent, is that you Engage in it now, you help it become take place now.”

[rachelkulagodfrey-blog]

I Refuse to “Compete” With Other Black Womxn

Originally published on April 2, 2019.

***Disclaimer: I’m still trying to sort out if/how the Stacey Dash types fit into this framework.***

I’ve recently taken a liking to referring to my late father as ‘The Liberian Eli Pope.‘

It’s not uncommon to hear children of immigrants, especially Black African immigrants, talk about mind-numbingly complex assimilationist teachings from a very young age. We get the ‘twice as good’ speech like Olivia did, compounded with reminders of how we’re not to act like Black American children. Stereotypes and stigmas around Black American womxn were especially rooted deeply in my father’s mind, resulting in his continuous lessons on why he would not allow me to act like ‘those girls.’ While his teachings may have stemmed out of the weight of his persona/political fears and insecurities, they resulted in the creation (festering?) of a social blueprint that pressured me to see other Black womxn as my competitors and/or potential reasons for my downfall. Oop.

During a recent panel with Black Girl Podcast, comedienne and actress Lala Milan spoke on the importance of collaboration, especially for Black womxn working within the same industry:

“What people don’t realize is when we can all come together as a collective, you automatically have magic. Because you can teach me something that I don’t know, and I can teach you something that you don’t know. But you’re so busy afraid that I’m gonna take your spot when there’s so much space that you’re trying to withhold your knowledge from me. But guess what? I’m gonna learn it with or without you because I’m that hungry. And if you’re just as hungry as me and you stop trying to starve everybody around you, we can all eat.”

Milan’s comments came my way via a friend who taught me this lesson personally. I love to dwell on these kinds of “coincidences.” As two creatives interested in the media/tech industry, it’s expected that we compete for one of our voices to be louder than the voice of the other. We have two completely different backgrounds, ways of expressing ourselves, and different approaches to most of the issues that complicate our respective lives. We expose, challenge, and speak up for each other in ways that are most necessary. What fucking sense would it make to read her as someone who is trying to take my spot? Or to read myself as someone who is out to get hers? None. At. All.

What I think we have in common is the hunger to which Milan refers. We want our families, ourselves, and Black and Brown people to thrive. I have reason to believe that we’re both more interested in the collective thriving than we are in being the figureheads of a neoliberal empire. I have reason to believe that we want to inspire enthusiasm and concern in our peers, in the fight against apathy. I also have reason to believe that we’re both invested in figuring out ways for Black folks to secure the rights to their cultural contributions, as opposed to struggling in the effort to combat the leeching that some “creators” have done and/or do. Cough. Cough. Cough.

Excuse me. Niggas got allergies.

Whether it be teaching me how to use Canva so that I could build my own graphics, gifting me with my first iPhone after I fucked up my Android, noticing my discomfort in a room full of white girls about to snort coke and warmly saving me by saying “You can’t be late! We’ll meet you there,” the Black womxn I’ve been honored to be in company and conversation with have proven what true “community building” can be.  For me, they have redefined what “winning” can look like Whether it be opening up my home for manifestation/prayer circles, internship/experience plugs, listening to rants about how Goldlink‘s love should be for no one but them, or throwing these literal AND figurative hands, I’ve also learned that winning with others is a lot more fulfilling than riding by my lonesome.

Every Black womxn I meet isn’t going to be my best friend. And I won’t always be able to support other Black womxn in every single way that they need. But I’m committed to trying. I’m committed to a present and future where all of us win, on our own reflective, genuine terms.  I’ll always be guarded because whether or not I actually need to be, I feel like I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to be out here chasing Black womxn down with my shield.

Sometimes I build boundaries that are a little too rigid, and other times I can’t seem to set any of the necessary boundaries at all. But as I strengthen my commitment to myself and to the Black womxn I’m trying to build with and for, I’m experiencing a slow but steady stream of clarity around my capability, my talent, and my ability to care for other beings in real, intimate ways. Every day, I find more and more Black womxn who are riding the same wave. The work is starting to feel a little less isolating.

Daddy issues be damned.

Check out some of the work these brilliant and bold Black womxn are doing:

Katherine Puntiel’s displacedaf podcast

The inspiration behind this post.

There are only three people in this world that I consistently ask about their thoughts on my work, and Kat is one of them. Check out her latest episode on the death of Nipsey Hussle, hip hop’s role in generating conversations around growth, and her personal relationship to success, community building, and developing selfhood.

Kariesha S. Martinez, Kelly D’Oleo, and Charles Bonar’s MediaHaven

Kariesha is a Co-Founder & Director of Content Creation. You can check our personal site here.

Kelly is a Co-Founder & Director of Creative Marketing and Design. (She’s also the being who taught me how to use Canva two years ago.)

Lena Mitchell’s Portfolio

Lena’s a freelance digital artist, a graphic designer, and my motherfucking hair inspiration. She recently designed bomb ass shirts for Green Box Shop! She also taught a Photoshop Tutorial this past weekend.

Melissa Denizard’s Portfolio

One of my favorite storytellers. Check out Melissa’s work to learn more about the possibilities for ingenuity and social change in the production of news/media. Check out her Instagram to learn more about Melissa (and also to watch “Word?”, a biweekly series in which she explores the implications of our everyday language on the way we understand culture (and vice versa).

You can also check out her interview for “The Bay Leaf Archive” here.

Kai Naima Williams’ Chapbook

Published by Hyacinth Girl Press in Fall 2018, my dear Kai Naima put out a collection of poems that slap in the most devastating, profound ways. Hits you in the spirit & the heart. Kai’s also the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Eat At The Table Theatre Company, a non-profit theatre company building space for young actors, writers, and creatives to hone in on their skills.

[brokenlungs93]

Inspired

So I had an English/lit assignment to journal five times a week. We could write about anything as long as it was at least half a page. And I'm huge on writing, I write fanfic, poems, little songs, actual books. But for some horrible reason I couldn't think of anything. Not a single idea of what to write about. I hate writing about myself it's not my style, in fact this rant itself is out of character for me. So I hopped on to Tumblr yesterday afternoon, and scoured the site for a prompt or insperation. Almost 3 hours later and I found it! It was some random post about Obama but @twofingerswhiskey had posted about a dream thier mom had and it was like striking gold for me. In conclusion since Tumblr inspired this little journal entry from yesterday I decided to share it here. Little Talks I knew a God who lives in the forest. Tall, with olive skin, and dark features, one look, if you ever saw him, and you would know he wasn’t human. I visit him often, the two of us sitting up at five in the morning, smoking cigarettes and talking about anything. For some reason, I can’t remember how this peculiar friendship began. I couldn’t begin to guess how I stumbled upon a God in this dark, overgrown forest. Though, for as long as I can remember he has always been a part of my life. When I asked the God about this he simply shrugged, and took another drag of nicotine. Lately I have been thinking this forest God might have been mortal once, long before I came around. There are moments during those morning talks, when dusk it barely breaking and the light of our cigarettes are our main source of illumination. Small moments after something I’ve said, where he looks wistfully into the trees. I hadn’t noticed before that the direction he gazes every time this happens is to the village I live in. Where people whisper about the cursed forest, and its enigmatic guardian. So, one day I asked the forest God if he wanted to live in the village as well, if he was lonely all the way out in the woods by himself. At the time, I didn’t fully understand his answer. “You’ll know someday, but to become a God is the loneliest achievement of them all. Once you do, they never look at you the same.” Now I would give anything for those daybreak hours, those pointless conversations and simple company.

[redshoesnblueskies]

Fanfic culture, AO3 origins going right back to strikethrough, fandom history.....

SO. MANY. LINKS.

for those who don’t want to click through:

these are all links to my tumblr - i did not write very many of them, but i know my links will remain the same and not be lost :)

The master post of upholding and celebrating fanfic, by @inkandcayenne :

‘I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/621654927974055936/inkandcayenne-tywinning-asked-you-2012-08-09

HISTORY OF FANDOM CULTURE FROM LJ TO AO3

'What you are doing when you say “If you don’t want crit, don’t post your story” is gatekeeping, and in a REALLY harmful way. Without fans creating work (fanfiction or art or meta), there is no fandom. You’re not only saying “you can’t be in fandom if you don’t want to be hurt” you’re actively calling for fandom to be cut down. That’s a bad thing. Fandom needs creator content in order to exist and grow.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/186058432379/so-if-youve-watched-my-general-meltdown-about

Foz: straight dudes of the world…read fanfic: 

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230785234/fozmeadows-totallyevillisa

foz: on depression and hurt/comfort

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230730609/on-depression-and-hurtcomfort

fantastic Foz posts from a while ago, addressing the ‘well just censor content and then you’re not godless heathens’ fallacy…

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230530849/fantastic-foz-posts-from-a-while-ago-addressing

Fanfiction & Capitalism, and Why I Think They Are Related [TW for homophobia, mentions of sexual violence, capitalism]

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230748619/fanfiction-capitalism-and-why-i-think-they-are

Fair use is authorized by law

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230721574/fyeahcopyright-heidi8-fair-use-is-wholly

fantastic breakdown of the sociology that led from LJ community culture to tumblr anonymous disconnected culture:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/611096897406615552/kanna-ophelia-taraljc-kanna-ophelia

'The Places Fandom Dwells: A cautionary Tale’ - EXCELLENT, LOTS OF LINKS

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179355549419/the-places-fandom-dwells-a-cautionary-tale 

'It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/173587593934/bonehandledknife-feynites-theskaldspeaks

BIG AO3 POSTS - HISTORY OF FANDOM

great breakdown of stats on how HUGE AO3 actually is…

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230519234/why-are-people-still-up-in-arms-about-ao3-needing

another breakdown of how huge AO3 is & intricate skills required to run it

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179336300829/hey-ao3-can-you-like-give-the-extra-38k-you-made

AO3 is in the top 300 biggest websites in the WORLD/how a huge site like this works

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230400619/hey-ao3-can-you-like-give-the-extra-38k-you-made

origin story of AO3 - very sweet  (10th anniversary of AO3)

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230398054/on-the-ao3-all-these-years-later

this blogger remembers when we didn’t have AO3

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179391607249/this-blog-is-unrepentantly-pro-ao3

adults built fandom - who runs cons? who runs AO3 & the legal team at OTW? codes the servers?

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179430883009/naryaflame-vanimore-askragtatter-rsasai

“AO3 IS OUR SITE.  It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags.”

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/188239677029/purge-of-2002-of-2012-what-are-those

'Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/165199049719/rapacityinblue-kaciart-rocket-sith

FANDOM HISTORY & CULTURE

copperbadge - fandom dad explains concrit & why it’s not welcome without specific request

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/186983936704/question-as-an-oldster-and-fandom-lurker-since

fanfic/fanart is a gift - respect it in the way you respect something freely given

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/187512037844/trickztr-friendly-reminder-that-fan-made

'Toxic Fandom: Chen Criticism and Entitlement Go Too Far’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179392060549/toxic-fandom-when-criticism-and-entitlement-go

an explanation of the anti’s as very damaged authoritarianism 

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230513414/freedom-of-fanfic-freedom-of-fanfic

why do fangirls always make them gay?

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/162428018414/why-do-fangirls-always-make-them-gay

fandom history through the ages and across continents

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/129594965539/teashoesandhair-ogress-jhameia

one of several versions of a HUGE history post educating people on why we need a non-censored AO3 & why this is vital (and how misinformed many fans are)

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230393414/theothersarshi-redshoesnblueskies

another version:  https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/173741270214/grison-in-space-veronica-rich

conversation on AO3 tagging (plus being screwed by censorship

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179391926284/except-that-no-one-uses-tags-like-fetishized

how AO3 is run by volunteer & how to volunteer yourself

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230390519/in-kind

Ao3 fund drive post that goes into why they don’t censor

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179230054009/anarfea-anarfea-people-keep-asking-how-can

what 'Archive of Our Own’ refers to

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179136825394/what-archive-of-our-own-refers-to

AO3’s transparent financial reporting & a good rant

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179136341494/ao3-donation-drive

a short explanation of LJ strikethrough

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179124456874/telarna-meeedeee-bomberqueen17-i-just

LIGHTER FARE

origin of the ! - the “bang path’ in fandom pairings :D

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/118991314994/hey-whats-up-with-the-in-fandoms-ie-fat

can we PLEASE have an AO3 rating system for books & media?? pleeeeease???  here’s some thoughts on how:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/119377580254/crowd-sourced-content-warnings-at-book-stores

LJ was my initial experience of examining how fic fits into these huge gaps left by conventional writing, media and daily IRL conversation/education - the kind of healing that fic can bring to both individuals and a collective body of both knowledge and healthy questioning of assumptions about sexuality as a whole.  I mean, the kind of absolutely common place knowledge about consent, power dynamics, experimentation to determine what one’s own sexuality looks like, and the the options available is extraordinary.  To have that breadth and depth of knowledge presented in an often beautifully creative format; where you could discuss with the author and other readers anything included in the fic and what it meant to both literature and real life, as well as all things fannish that one’s wild imagination could come up with…. good god what I would have given for that information as a teen.  

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/122835116349/bonehandledknife-redshoesnblueskies

Fandom Is…. (poem)

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/124514359704/fandom-is-focus-fandom-is-obsession-fandom-is

Can fandom bring back the concept of a squick? Pleeeease?

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/126342903959/can-fandom-bring-back-the-concept-of-a-squick

'so don’t pretend it can’t be done, author dudes, because there’s a million fangirls who can write lyric filthy devastating character-revealing plot-advancing poetic tender wall-slamming trope-inverting panting sweaty trope-embracing aching crying sex…..and can do it far far better than you.’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/124171180589/sex-is-hard-to-write-about-because-you-lose-the

'It’s just fanfic…’

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/126188502159/its-just-fan-fic

“Ship means something you want to see happen.” Bitch, no it don’t. 

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/179234734799/pyrebomb-ship-means-something-you-want-to-see

why can you sell fanart, but not fanfic??

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/128782763684/legal-side-of-tumblr-can-you-answer-me-a

humor: different types of fanfic - in graphics:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/129402064267/justanotherfmablog-yougothenigo

THE SUFFERING ARTIST CONCEPT IS BULLSHIT AND SHOULD BE BLOWTORCHED:

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/186461152949/zendarkwalkerx-magicianmew-katiecrenshaw

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/166161827744/if-one-more-person-says-what-if-theyd-medicated

IF YOU’VE MADE IT THIS FAR, YOU DESERVE STARSHIPS (SCROLL DOWN):

https://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/138038043884/samati-saathi1013-tygermama-zillah975