#Should I have made this 4 different posts?

[amateurvoltaire]

For the past six years or so, this graph has been making its rounds on social media, always reappearing at conveniently timed moments…

The insinuation is loud and clear: parallels abound between 18th-century France and 21st-century USA. Cue the alarm bells—revolution is imminent! The 10% should panic, and ordinary folk should stock up on non-perishables and, of course, toilet paper, because it wouldn’t be a proper crisis without that particular frenzy. You know the drill.

Well, unfortunately, I have zero interest in commenting on the political implications or the parallels this graph is trying to make with today’s world. I have precisely zero interest in discussing modern-day politics here. And I also have zero interest in addressing the bottom graph.

This is not going to be one of those "the [insert random group of people] à la lanterne” (1) kind of posts.  If you’re here for that, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

What I am interested in is something much less click-worthy but far more useful: how historical data gets used and abused and why the illusion of historical parallels can be so seductive—and so misleading. It’s not glamorous, I’ll admit, but digging into this stuff teaches us a lot more than mindless rage.

So, let’s get into it. Step by step, we’ll examine the top graph, unpick its assumptions, and see whether its alarmist undertones hold any historical weight.

Step 1: Actually Look at the Picture and Use Your Brain

When I saw this graph, my first thought was, “That’s odd.” Not because it’s hard to believe the top 10% in 18th-century France controlled 60% of the wealth—that could very well be true. But because, in 15 years of studying the French Revolution, I’ve never encountered reliable data on wealth distribution from that period.

Why? Because to the best of my knowledge, no one was systematically tracking income or wealth across the population in the 18th century. There were no comprehensive records, no centralised statistics, and certainly no detailed breakdowns of who owned what across different classes. Graphs like this imply data, and data means either someone tracked it or someone made assumptions to reconstruct it. That’s not inherently bad,  but it did get my spider senses tingling.

Then there’s the timeframe: 1760–1790. Thirty years is a long time— especially when discussing a period that included wars, failed financial policies, growing debt, and shifting social dynamics. Wealth distribution wouldn’t have stayed static during that time. Nobles who were at the top in 1760 could be destitute by 1790, while merchants starting out in 1760 could be climbing into the upper tiers by the end of the period. Economic mobility wasn’t common, but over three decades, it wasn’t unheard of either.

All of this raises questions about how this graph was created. Where’s the data coming from? How was it measured? And can we really trust it to represent such a complex period?

Step 2: Check the Fine Print

Since the graph seemed questionable, the obvious next step was to ask: Where does this thing come from? Luckily, the source is clearly cited at the bottom: “The Income Inequality of France in Historical Perspective” by Christian Morrisson and Wayne Snyder, published in the European Review of Economic History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2000).

Great! A proper academic source. But, before diving into the article, there’s a crucial detail tucked into the fine print:

“Data for the bottom 40% in France is extrapolated given a single data point.”

What does that mean?

Extrapolation is a statistical method used to estimate unknown values by extending patterns or trends from a small sample of data. In this case, the graph’s creator used one single piece of data—one solitary data point—about the wealth of the bottom 40% of the French population. They then scaled or applied that one value to represent the entire group across the 30-year period (1760–1790).

Put simply, this means someone found one record—maybe a tax ledger, an income statement, or some financial data—pertaining to one specific year, region, or subset of the bottom 40%, and decided it was representative of the entire demographic for three decades.

Let’s be honest: you don’t need a degree in statistics to know that’s problematic. Using a single data point to make sweeping generalisations about a large, diverse population (let alone across an era of wars, famines, and economic shifts) is a massive leap. In fact, it’s about as reliable as guessing how the internet feels about a topic from a single tweet.

This immediately tells me that whatever numbers they claim for the bottom 40% of the population are, at best, speculative. At worst? Utterly meaningless.

It also raises another question: What kind of serious journal would let something like this slide? So, time to pull up the actual article and see what’s going on.

Step 3: Check the Sources

As I mentioned earlier, the source for this graph is conveniently listed at the bottom of the image. Three clicks later, I had downloaded the actual article: “The Income Inequality of France in Historical Perspective” by Morrisson and Snyder.

The first thing I noticed while skimming through the article? The graph itself is nowhere to be found in the publication.

This is important. It means the person who created the graph didn’t just lift it straight from the article—they derived it from the data in the publication. Now, that’s not necessarily a problem; secondary analysis of published data is common. But here’s the kicker: there’s no explanation in the screenshot of the graph about which dataset or calculations were used to make it. We’re left to guess.

So, to figure this out, I guess I’ll have to dive into the article itself, trying to identify where they might have pulled the numbers from. Translation: I signed myself up to read 20+ pages of economic history. Thrilling stuff.

But hey, someone has to do it. The things I endure to fight disinformation...

Step 4: Actually Assess the Sources Critically

It doesn’t take long, once you start reading the article, to realise that regardless of what the graph is based on, it’s bound to be somewhat unreliable. Right from the first paragraph, the authors of the paper point out the core issue with calculating income for 18th-century French households: THERE IS NO DATA.

The article is refreshingly honest about this. It states multiple times that there were no reliable income distribution estimates in France before World War II. To fill this gap, Morrisson and Snyder used a variety of proxy sources like the Capitation Tax Records (2), historical socio-professional tables, and Isnard’s income distribution estimates (3).

After reading the whole paper, I can say their methodology is intriguing and very reasonable. They’ve pieced together what they could by using available evidence, and their process is quite well thought-out. I won’t rehash their entire argument here, but if you’re curious, I’d genuinely recommend giving it a read.

Most importantly, the authors are painfully aware of the limitations of their approach. They make it very clear that their estimates are a form of educated guesswork—evidence-based, yes, but still guesswork.   At no point do they overstate their findings or present their conclusions as definitive

As such,  instead of concluding with a single, definitive version of the income distribution, they offer multiple possible scenarios.

It’s not as flashy as a bold, tidy graph, is it? But it’s far more honest—and far more reflective of the complexities involved in reconstructing historical economic data.

Step 5: Run the numbers

Now that we’ve established the authors of the paper don’t actually propose a definitive income distribution, the question remains: where did the creators of the graph get their data? More specifically, which of the proposed distributions did they use?

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate the original article or post containing the graph. Admittedly, I haven’t tried very hard, but the first few pages of Google results just link back to Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and Tumblr posts. In short, all I have to go on is this screenshot.

I’ll give the graph creators the benefit of the doubt and assume that, in the full article, they explain where they sourced their data. I really hope they do—because they absolutely should.

That being said, based on the information in Morrisson and Snyder’s paper, I’d make an educated guess that the data came from Table 6 or Table 10, as these are the sections where the authors attempt to provide income distribution estimates.

Now, which dataset does the graph use? Spoiler: None of them.

How can we tell? Since I don’t have access to the raw data or the article where this graph might have been originally posted, I resorted to a rather unscientific method: I used a graphical design program to divide each bar of the chart into 2.5% increments and measure the approximate percentage for each income group.

Here’s what I found:

Now, take a moment to spot the issue. Do you see it?

The problem is glaring: NONE of the datasets from the paper fit the graph. Granted, my measurements are just estimates, so there might be some rounding errors. But the discrepancies are impossible to ignore, particularly for the bottom 40% and the top 10%.

In Morrisson and Snyder’s paper, the lowest estimate for the bottom 40% (1st and 2nd quintiles) is 10%. Even if we use the most conservative proxy, the Capitation Tax estimate, it’s 9%. But the graph claims the bottom 40% held only 6%.

For the top 10% (10th decile), the highest estimate in the paper is 53%. Yet the graph inflates this to 60%.

Step 6: For fun, I made my own bar charts

Because I enjoy this sort of thing (yes, this is what I consider fun—I’m a very fun person), I decided to use the data from the paper to create my own bar charts. Here’s what came out:

What do you notice?

While the results don’t exactly scream “healthy economy,” they look much less dramatic than the graph we started with. The creators of the graph have clearly exaggerated the disparities, making inequality seem worse.

Step 7: Understand the context before drawing conclusions

Numbers, by themselves, mean nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I could tell you right now that 47% of people admit to arguing with inanimate objects when they don’t work, with printers being the most common offender, and you’d probably believe it. Why? Because it sounds plausible—printers are frustrating, I’ve used a percentage, and I’ve phrased it in a way that sounds “academic.”

You likely wouldn’t even pause to consider that I’m claiming 3.8 billion people argue with inanimate objects. And let’s be real: 3.8 billion is such an incomprehensibly large number that our brains tend to gloss over it.

If, instead, I said, “Half of your friends probably argue with their printers,” you might stop and think, “Wait, that seems a bit unlikely.” (For the record, I completely made that up—I have no clue how many people yell at their stoves or complain to their toasters.)

The point? Numbers mean nothing unless we put them into context.

The original paper does this well by contextualising its estimates, primarily through the calculation of the Gini coefficient (4).

The authors estimate France’s Gini coefficient in the late 18th century to be 0.59, indicating significant income inequality. However, they compare this figure to other regions and periods to provide a clearer picture:

Amsterdam (1742): Much higher inequality, with a Gini of 0.69.

Britain (1759): Lower inequality, with a Gini of 0.52, which rose to 0.59 by 1801.

Prussia (mid-19th century): Far less inequality, with a Gini of 0.34–0.36.

This comparison shows that income inequality wasn’t unique to France. Other regions experienced similar or even higher levels of inequality without spontaneously erupting into revolution.

Accounting for Variations

The authors also recalculated the Gini coefficient to account for potential variations. They assumed that the income of the top quintile (the wealthiest 20%) could vary by ±10%. Here’s what they found:

If the top quintile earned 10% more, the Gini coefficient rose to 0.66, placing France significantly above other European countries of the time.

If the top quintile earned 10% less, the Gini dropped to 0.55, bringing France closer to Britain’s level.

Ultimately, the authors admit there’s uncertainty about the exact level of inequality in France. Their best guess is that it was comparable to other countries or somewhat worse.

Step 8: Drawing Some Conclusions

Saying that most people in the 18th century were poor and miserable—perhaps the French more so than others—isn’t exactly a compelling statement if your goal is to gather clicks or make a dramatic political point.

It’s incredibly tempting to look at the past and find exactly what we want to see in it. History often acts as a mirror, reflecting our own expectations unless we challenge ourselves to think critically. Whether you call it wishful thinking or confirmation bias, it’s easy to project the future onto the past.

Looking at the initial graph, I understand why someone might fall into this trap. Simple, tidy narratives are appealing to everyone. But if you’ve studied history, you’ll know that such narratives are a myth. Human nature may not have changed in thousands of years, but the contexts we inhabit are so vastly different that direct parallels are meaningless.

So, is revolution imminent? Well, that’s up to you—not some random graph on the internet.

Notes

(1) A la lanterne was a  revolutionary cry during the French Revolution, symbolising mob justice where individuals were sometimes hanged from lampposts as a form of public execution

(2) The capitation tax was a fixed head tax implemented in France during the Ancien Régime. It was levied on individuals, with the amount owed determined by their social and professional status. Unlike a proportional income tax, it was based on pre-assigned categories rather than actual earnings, meaning nobles, clergy, and commoners paid different rates regardless of their actual wealth or income.

(3) Jean-Baptiste Isnard was an 18th-century economist. These estimates attempted to describe the theoretical distribution of income among different social classes in pre-revolutionary France. Isnard’s work aimed to categorise income across groups like nobles, clergy, and commoners, providing a broad picture of economic disparity during the period.

(4) The Gini coefficient (or Gini index) is a widely used statistical measure of inequality within a population, specifically in terms of income or wealth distribution. It ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates perfect equality (everyone has the same income or wealth), and 1 represents maximum inequality (one person or household holds all the wealth).

[lazy-baby-jaiden]

A friend of mine had a really fun idea yesterday. 🤪😆

We would send each other different diaper pictures📷 to try and replicate. Then we'd give each other points 💯 for how well we'd replicated the pictures. The person with less points would then get punished😣.

These are my replication attempts:

Go and check out their original creators 👀 @mommyandbabybruce and @sophiaalynnxo ! I hope you don't mind me using your pictures😅

If you do please send me a DM and I'll take them down😇

What should the punishment for the loser be🤔?

My friend hasn't had his turn yet and we both have no idea what a good punishment could be😑. So if you have any good ideas send me an Ask or DM or just comment on this post😊

-------------------------------------------------------

After I was done with the challenge I begged 🥺 my friend to let me make cummies and he told me I did such a good job that I could😋!

I immediately started humping away like the good little diaper girl I am😖!

That alone wasn't enough though😧. I was still locked🔒 in my wittle cage after all, but I was allowed to use my magic wand🤭.

So I did and it made me squirt real quick 😳🙈.

[lynzishell]

🌶️18+ Only

Prev // Next

*Note: If you have not read Part 4 and cba to go back and read it all, then this post should give you enough context.

Transcript below the cut:

Atlas: Hey. I was just thinking about you. Asher: Were you? Atlas: Can’t you tell?

Asher: What were you thinking? Atlas: I’ll show you.

Asher: Ahh… thank god you still feel the same. Atlas: What?

Asher: Nothing. Keep going.

[Later…]

Atlas: Are you coming to bed? Asher: … Atlas: Ash?

Asher: If I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth? Atlas: Of course. Asher: That last morning in Selvadorada, when we woke up in the jungle, you looked genuinely freaked out and you asked me if I remembered anything. What did you mean? Atlas: Why are you asking about that?

Asher: Because something feels different, ever since we got back, and I can’t shake it. Atlas: I see. Is that what’s been bothering you? Asher: [nods] Did something happen? Atlas: I think so. I’ve been trying to convince myself it was all just a dream, but I don’t think it was. I wanted to tell you, but… it’s going to make me sound insane. Asher: Tell me.

Atlas: I don’t really know where to start. Asher: At the beginning? Atlas: [scoffs] I wish it were that simple. Um, do you remember the temple? Asher: I remember the ruins. And the museum. Atlas: Right, okay. The museum. Do you remember what that guy, Sam, I think, do you remember what he said about curses?

One long and confusing story later…

Asher: How is that possible? Atlas: I have no idea, but I think maybe you’re right, that things are not the same as they were when we left. I don’t know exactly how, but I feel it too.

Asher: How do we go back?   Atlas: Back where? Asher: I don’t know. To whatever timeline we were in before. Atlas: I don’t think we do. I think we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.

Asher: [sinking to his knees] But…

Atlas: Hey. Come here. Everything’s okay. More than okay. We made it out. We have each other, and we have our family and our friends, and we still get to create the life we always dreamed of. Nothing else matters. The rest is just… background noise.

Asher: Background noise? Atlas: Yes, and for what it’s worth, one thing that hasn’t changed, that will never change, is how much I love you. Asher: Atlas, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Atlas: We’ll never have to find out. For the rest of our lives, we’re in this together.

Asher: I love you so much. Atlas: I love you too.

[sobx9]

Season 5 theories

What I would love to see, what I would like to see and what I think might actually happen. Kudos to this show for still occupying my brain three weeks later. Should I be working right now? Maybe…

Scenario 1 - would love this

This one only really works, if the season 4 ended a little differently. The Pogues don’t actually see JJ dying and they only assume he’s dead. I did a post about it earlier, here’s the plot:

I think it could be really powerful and fans would love this.

Imagine the tension in a hospital scene where JJ is being treated and the Pogues almost find him, but at the last second they don’t. JJ maybe even sees them through a hospital window while he’s in bed and tries to get their attention but he’s too weak to do. JJ freaking out and trying to scream Kiara’s name would be so good and give us all the angst.

Once they finally reunite, again that could be really powerful. reuniting with someone you thought was dead? Peak cinema if you ask me. You still have the villains from the season 4, the crown hunting, the revenge plot and happy ending to top it off.

This will not happen unless they ignore some of the things done and said in the finale + Rudy would have to want to do one more season

Scenario 2 - would like this

I will be honest, I don’t like supernatural stuff, it’s just not my jam. And even though this show hinted at it at times, I am not convinced that’s the direction the show runners want to go. But reading some fan fictions about JJ being resurrected actually made me change my mind. Again, could be really powerful. Them not believing he’s actually alive, Kiara worried it’s only a dream she could wake up from any minute, Pope trying to find a logical explanation and JJ giving them shit for burying him in Morocco and leaving him behind. All good stuff.

This could only happen if they decide to go fully supernatural AND Rudy is willing to do one more season.

Scenario 3 - might actually happen

They get their revenge and the crown, and they wish for JJ to return. Either it ends with them wishing for it, leaving an open ending and for fans to interpret it how they want to, not showing us if the crown is actually magic and can grant wishes or not. Or there could be a scene where they wish for it, nothing happens but then they are back home, sitting around a fire and we see a blond man approaching them. Or they wish for it over his grave and we see a hand sticking out of the sand. You don’t need Rudy for that, a stunt double could do it. A happy ending montage could be then made with the stuff they cut from the previous seasons so that JJ is actually seen alive.

Or they can leave JJ’s character out of season 5 completely and let fans be even more disappointed

Thoughts? Opinion? Your ideas? Would love to discuss

[flock-of-cassowaries]

As a person diagnosed with a disease that causes brain inflammation, whose diagnosis was significantly delayed by a neurologist failing to pass along important MRI results - yes, this was infuriating.

I nevertheless ship Hannigram, for reasons I struggle to succinctly explain.

(I would say “brainworms”, but I now get a monitoring MRI every year, and my last scan was clear. Presumably, someone would’ve mentioned it if there were literal worms in there.)

More on both the medical angle, and the “why TF do I ship this??” angle, below the cut.

What it felt like to find out important test results were not shared with me:

It was a horrible gut punch. In my case, there was no malice - only negligence - but the result was that I had been walking around for ten years gaslighting myself that the worsening symptoms I was experiencing couldn’t possibly be what I originally thought they were.

I was mad, but also just devastated. It really shook my core sense of safety in the world.

It took me about a year to even start to kind of feel normal again, despite the fact that I was getting really good medical care in the wake of the error being detected.

Details of what’s portrayed in this episode that are just dumb (aka ✨pedantry✨):

My experience of actual medical testing and care around inflammatory autoimmune brain conditions makes me even more irritated by this plot line.

First off, the MRI scene. Like, perhaps it’s different in the states, but in Canada, MRI departments operate 24/7. I’ve had scans scheduled at 3am.

They will definitely set up an emergency scan for you if you have an emergent condition (I only waited four days for the scan that ultimately got me diagnosed), but there’s no way that they could just do an “off the books” unofficial scan with no one around, as is portrayed in the show.

Also, neurologists don’t perform the MRI. Radiologists do it, and then they send it to the neurologist to interpret.

Most importantly, you CANNOT move your head during a scan. There’s actually a little cushion in there that fits tightly around your head to stabilize it so you don’t accidentally move it, but they also will tell you to stay very still. One radiologist warned me to “breathe gently”.

In the show, you can see the plastic frame where the stabilizing cushion should be, but in the name of a cool shot, they’ve removed it, and Will Graham is just bobbing his fucking head like he’s in Night At The Roxbury.

I was so irritated I made a gif.

That scan would be unusable.

Also, the fact that Hannibal is able to correctly guess the exact condition Will has makes no sense. So many things could mimic those same symptoms.

To conclusive determine that what I had was MS, the following tests were done (within the context of the taxpayer-funded Canadian medical system):

1. Standard blood panel and urinalysis to rule out common infections

2. MRI

3. MRI with contrast fluid

4. Spinal tap

5. Seventeen additional blood tests

And they did all that despite the fact that I had a first degree-relative already diagnosed with the same disease.

Some people have suggested Hannibal made the diagnosis based on smell, but that is anatomically nonsensical. The brain is wrapped in a pretty thick membrane; aseptic brain inflammation would be not off-gassing from the skin or mouth like a stomach cancer, or arsenic poisoning.

Finally, the ease with which Hannibal is able to talk Dr. Dipshit into committing gross and easily-detectable medical malpractice makes no goddamn sense. It is perhaps the baldest example of the cynicism of the show’s writing - as I argued in another post, it portrays a world in which almost everyone is despicable.

If we rule out the possibility of literal brainworms, how the f*^% did I end up shipping these two?

As for how I ended up shipping Hannigram anyway - I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that as a former right-wing true believer, I am an expert at creatively misreading media.

When almost all of popular art has the theme “your beliefs are bad, and you should feel bad”, you learn to preemptively kill the author (death the author?) so that you can extract enjoyment from a work of art without reexamining your odious beliefs.

( See: Republican politicians using lefty protest songs at rallies. )

I’m no longer a conservative - I excised those brainworms about a decade ago, thank god - but the willingness to just arbitrarily toss out parts of a story that don’t suit remains strong in me.

Season 2 of Hannibal is quite good, and Season 3 (while objectively bonkers and very poorly paced) has some great character moments. Hannibal as a character becomes a lot more complex as he unravels.

This unraveling makes him a fascinating figure onto which to project some of my worst psychological tendencies - specifically, my tendency towards splitting (where I see the people close to me as either all good, or all bad, and for that perception can change in an instant). So that’s really interesting to explore.

It’s also probably a deliberate misreading of the text on my part, but there are quite a few parts in s2 and s3 where Hannibal can be read as straight-up delusional; and while I am sensitive to the fact that people with delusional disorders are far, far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators, I am also endlessly fascinated by the trope of “character looks back on his life, and sees a series of horrible sins he’s committed, whose damage to others cannot be undone; and struggles with how to cope with that.”

So in that context, giving Hannibal a deus-ex-machina of high-dose risperidone creates some fascinating narrative possibilities.

(This is probably something I enjoy writing because I spent 15 years being an obnoxious apologist for horrible right-wing politicians.)

I also just like the idea of Will taking it upon himself to kill this guy once and for all, and then not being able to bring himself to do it, and instead just keeping him captive and constantly wrestling with the question of whether he’s just being pragmatic about keeping everyone in the vicinity safe from his pet serial killer, or if he’s actually doing what he’s doing to passive-aggressively punish Hannibal.

There’s just so much there, thematically, that I love to play with.

hannibal lecter SLANDER rant [spoilers for 1x10]

WHATTTT WHAT WHAT. Hannibal Lecter…Oooh… this just confused me so bad guys and when I finish the whole series and this whole rant turns out to be wrong I’ll admit it but how can you still sit there and ship hannigram!!!!! after this!!!!! it made me so mad that a LICENSED RADIOLOGIST sat there and lied to Will’s face ABOUT HIS OWN RESULTS because Hannibal asked him or whatever the fuck, I don’t know how close him and the doctor are yet or what their relationship is BUT???? LIKE???? He’s actively subjecting him to hallucinatory torture and the pain that comes with it, HALF. OF. HIS. BRAIN. IS. INFLAMED. HE CAN LITTERALY DIE FROM IT + brain damage, seizures, and worsen his already worse mental health. I HATE THIS GUY!!!! My hate train will start from here and continue on until he can prove me wrong

[horsemeatluvr23]

the juppet !! i just realised he is jerma posing i swear that was unintentional...... i spent so long digging thru muppet concept art and looking at old puppet designs just to end up doing a rly simple drawing but. i love joehills!! i have only been watching them for like 4 years but their videos r so special to me :3

[miciiq]

Got Aventurine in 60 pulls!

He’s so auxhuehuche I’m so happy I have him now

[acourtofquestions]

"You'll come back," Manon said.

It sounded like more of a threat than anything

Dorian smirked. "Would you miss me if I didn't?"

Manon didn't reply. He didn't know why he expected her to.

He'd taken all of a step, when Asterin clasped his shoulder. "In and out, quick as you can," she warned him. "Take care of Narene." Worry indeed shone in the Second's gold-flecked black eyes. Dorian bowed his head. "With my life," he promised as he approached her mount and grasped the dangling reins. He didn't fail to miss the gratitude that softened Asterin's features. Or that Manon had already turned away from him.

A fool to start down this path with her. He should have known better.

The hours that passed were some of the longest of Manon's existence.

From anticipation, she told herself. Of what she had to do.

Abraxos, unsurprisingly, found them within an hour, his reins sliced from the struggle he'd no doubt waged and won with Sorrel. He waited, however, beside Manon in silence, wholly focused upon the gate where Dorian and Narene had vanished.

Time dripped by. The king's sword was constant weight at her side. She cursed herself for needing to prove-to him, to herself-that she refused to let him go into Morath for practical, ordinary reasons. Erawan wasn't at the Ferian Gap. It'd be safer. Somewhat. But if the Matrons were there … That was why he'd gone. To learn if they were. To see if Petrah truly commanded the host there, and how many Ironteeth were present. He had not been trained as a spy, but he'd grown up in a court where people wielded smiles and clothes like weapons. He knew how to blend in, how to listen. How to make people see what they wished to see. She'd sent Elide into the dungeons of Morath, Darkness damn her. Sending the King of Adarlan into the Ferian Gap was no different.

It didn't stop her breath from escaping when Abraxos stiffened, scanning the sky. As if he heard something they couldn't.

And it was the joy that sparked in her mount's eyes that told her.

Moments later, Narene sailed toward them, making a lazy path over the mountains, a dark-haired, pale-skinned rider atop her. He'd truly been able to change parts of himself. Had made his face nearly unrecognizable. And kept it that way.

Asterin rushed toward the mare, and even Manon blinked as her Second threw her arms around Narene's neck. Holding her tight. The mare only leaned her head against Asterin's back and huffed.

Manon hadn't dwelled long on what she'd say.

And as the three hundred Ironteeth witches filed into the hall, some coming off their patrols, Manon half wondered if she should have. They watched her, watched the Thirteen, with a wary disdain.

Their disgraced Wing Leader; their fallen Heir.

When all were gathered, Petrah, still standing in the doorway where she'd appeared, merely said, "My life debt for an audience, Blackbeak."

Manon swallowed, her tongue as dry as paper. Seated atop Abraxos, she could see every shifting movement in the crowd, the wide eyes or hands gripping swords.

"I will not tell you the particulars of who I am," Manon said at last. "For I think you have already heard them."

"Crochan bitch," someone spat.

Manon set her eyes on the Blackbeaks, stone-faced where the others bristled with hatred. It was for them she spoke, for them she had come here.

jacket, then hoisting up her white shirt. Rising in the stirrups to bare her scarred, brutalized abdomen. "She does not lie."

UNCLEAN

There, the word remained stamped. Would always be stamped.

"How many of you," Asterin called out, "have been similarly branded? By your Matron, by your coven leader? How many of you have had your stillborn witchlings burned before you might hold them?"

The silence that fell now was different from before. Shaking shuddering.

Manon glanced at the Thirteen to find tears in Ghislaine's eyes as she took in the brand on Asterin's womb. Tears in the eyes of all of them, who had not known. And it was for those tears, which Manon had never seen, that she faced the host again.

"You will be killed in this war, or after it. And you will never see our homeland again."

"What is it that you want, Blackbeak?" Petrah asked from the archway.

"Ride with us," Manon breathed. "Fly with us.

Against Morath. Against the people who would keep you from your homeland, your future." Murmuring broke out again. Manon pushed ahead, "An Ironteeth-Crochan alliance. Perhaps one to break our curse at last."

Again, that shuddering silence. Like a storm about to break Asterin sat back in the saddle, but kept her shirt open.

"The choice of how our people's future shall be shaped is yours," Manon told each of the witches assembled, all the Blackbeaks who might fly to war and never return. "But I will tell you this." Her hands shook, and she fisted them on her thighs. "There is a better world out there. And I have seen it."

Even the Thirteen looked toward her now.

"I have seen witch and human and Fae dwell together in peace. And it is not weakness to do so, but a strength. I have met kings and queens whose love for their kingdoms, their peoples, is so great that the self is secondary. Whose love for their people is so strong that even in the face of unthinkable odds, they do the impossible."

Manon lifted her chin. "You are my people. Whether my grandmother decrees it so or not, you are my people, and always will be. But I will fly against you, if need be, to ensure that there is a future for those who cannot fight for it themselves. Too long have we preyed on the weak, relished doing so. It is time that we became better than our foremothers." The words she had given the Thirteen months ago. "There is a better world out there," she said again. "And I will fight for it." She turned Abraxos away, toward the plunge behind them. "Will you?"

Manon nodded to Petrah. Eyes bright, the Heir only nodded back. They would be permitted to leave as they had arrived: unharmed.

So Manon nudged Abraxos, and he leaped into the sky, the Thirteen following suit.

Not a child of war. But of peace.

[thirsty-4-ghouls]

“Hancock is bad with kids” “Hancock is bad with Shaun” no, well, maybe, but where I was getting at was, the objectively funniest dynamic there that I can think of is that Hancock does, indeed, not know what to do around kids BUT Shaun is super curious because of that and will not leave him alone. Hancock will be looking at sole like “I can’t handle this, i don’t know what to do, get your kid” and Shaun is just like “why do you dress like that? Do you still get sunburnt? Do you like lazer rifles? I like lazer rifles.” Like a cat that sees the person ignoring them and goes up to them for attention. And the funniest response from sole is something like “the sunburn question is rude, Shaun” and then they continue doing whatever they were before saying that.

[mishy-mashy]

I lost the OG post where I was talking about the EX novel 4

Anyway, I got the book and haven't even read it straight because I'm too excited to do that, and

Spoilers.

- Reinhard really just had to blink and everyone died, huh...

- Groovy Gumlet is cute

- Julius is cute. He's also the MC here

- I thought that when the wiki said they didn't show Reinhard VS Cecilus, but cut to the aftermath, they were exaggerating for the sake of the wiki summary... they literally did this. Just said something like 'Begin!' and we cut to Cecilus covered in cuts

- Translations are a bit strange (Cecilus = Cecils, Ia = Ire, In = Innes, Vollachia = Volakia...)

- Cecilus is good at blending in to the point Ferris (a demihuman) didn't notice him, but Julius still happened to through magic

- Groovy makes an appearance screaming and flying through the sky and I like it. There's just a distant "YAAAAAAAHHHHH" from the forest

- Julius is really kind and compassionate here. He's also extremely perceptive of everything that I was surprised and half-scared because how???

- Cecilus is literally that guy who comes into work late, a disheveled mess

Vincent: Where are your two swords?

Cecilus, who arrived late: At the blacksmiths. I was late, so when I got out of bed, I just grabbed the two first swords I saw, and—

Is literally the gist of one of their conversations

- Julius is cute

- Cecilus almost got mistaken for a woman at first glance

- I like Groovy a lot. He swears like a sailor, is super cute, walks around with weapons galore, and his name is GROOVY

Like. Awesome puffballs.

- Vincent refers to Cecilus as a thing, talking about how he had absolutely no situational awareness from the start, being completely out of the loop the ENTIRE TIME

- Is Bordeaux buff or something under those old clothes??

- THE ART.

- Ferris's feminine appearance is commented on

- Reinhard wears a Collar of Submission for those who are into that

[zoueriemandzijnopmars]

No, y'know why else we need gender neutral bathrooms? Because there's always a line for the women's bathroom and never for the men's.

Like it seems common sense to make two identical sized bathrooms for men and women but. it. is. not. Female bladders are smaller on average so women have to pee more often, not to mention the fact that going to the bathroom to pee takes longer for women usually (an urinal is a lot faster). So if there are as many toilets in the men's room as in the women's bathroom, the women will have too little space and the men too much. (And usually the men get more because of the aforementioned urinals)

Therefore gender neutral bathrooms with closed off stalls and maybe a small room with urinals on the side.

[treestargarden]

theres a grief that comes with realizing past severe mental illness that held u back from living ur life n learning things on the "age appropriate" timeline.

in my late 20s n im just now realizing like, what i actually wanna do. like this is this the first time in my life i have a "life" plan that extends past "get thru this day".

[nyanryan]

the need to have "neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" be two completely different things with no grey area in between is a disservice to both groups. i would say every single person on this earth could qualify as neurodivergent if they bothered to go see a psychiatrist. its just that only certain ppl are going to be put in a situation where they cannot function and need a label to explain it bc society

[determinate-negation]

important edit!

UPDATE 9/4/2024: we will be closing down the old campaign because mohamed was having issues with the guy hosting it. i'm hosting a new campaign which i am linking below. THIS IS THE UPDATED LINK.

(this is a verified campaign and is 192 on the vetted fundraiser sheet)

mohammed @save-mohamed-family has been trying to raise money to save his family for a while on tumblr, and he raised a significant amount of money but the bank his beneficiary was using abruptly shut his account down and he lost all his progress. a lot of banks and money services have been arbitrarily freezing or shutting down the money palestinians are raising to survive this genocide, which is just an additional injustice for people already suffering so much. mohammed has since opened a new gofundme but its made very little progress.

please donate to this campaign– especially if youve donated in the past because gofundme will have refunded you

mohammed already lost his mother, father, and four sisters in the war who were killed in a bombing, and is now living in tents with his remaining family members. he was seriously injured in his foot and it may need to be amputated, but he told me that hes doesn't care if he loses his foot, he just doesn't want to lose his wife and children. his wife has uterine cancer but hasn't been able to get treatment because the genocidal israeli army has destroyed health centers. his children are suffering from infectious diseases spreading throughout gaza. there is practically no medical treatment or medicine available in gaza and the massacres continue everyday. food and water is scarce and priced exorbitantly. mohammed has made posts on his blog about their situation and i do encourage you to read his own words too.

please dont be desensitized to this just because it's been going on for so long. put yourself in his shoes and think about how you would feel– after nearly a year of the most destructive bombing campaign in history, living in hunger and pain every second with no home, no running water, no sanitation, not having a moment of security, subject to arbitrary decisions from an occupying force. no one should have to live like this.

the pain of losing so many family members, your home, your job, and everything you have is already unimaginable. please dont let him lose any more of his family. donate to this campaign and if you cant, share it with someone who can.

especially if you have a degree of disposable income i implore you to think about what you can reasonably give. it could be relatively small adjustment for you but make a significant difference for someone else.

[valeriehalla]

actual writing advice

1. Use the passive voice.

What? What are you talking about, “don’t use the passive voice”? Are you feeling okay? Who told you that? Come on, let’s you and me go to their house and beat them with golf clubs. It’s just grammar. English is full of grammar: you should go ahead and use all of it whenever you want, on account of English is the language you’re writing in.

2. Use adverbs.

Now hang on. What are you even saying to me? Don’t use adverbs? My guy, that is an entire part of speech. That’s, like—that’s gotta be at least 20% of the dictionary. I don’t know who told you not to use adverbs, but you should definitely throw them into the Columbia river.

3. There’s no such thing as “filler”.

Buddy, “filler” is what we called the episodes of Dragon Ball Z where Goku wasn’t blasting Frieza because the anime was in production before Akira Toriyama had written the part where Goku blasts Frieza. Outside of this extremely specific context, “filler” does not exist. Just because a scene wouldn’t make it into the Wikipedia synopsis of your story’s plot doesn’t mean it isn’t important to your story. This is why “plot” and “story” are different words!

4. okay, now that I’ve snared you in my trap—and I know you don’t want to hear this—but orthography actually does kind of matter

First of all, a lot of what you think of as “grammar” is actually orthography. Should I put a comma here? How do I spell this word in this context? These are questions of orthography (which is a fancy Greek word meaning “correct-writing”). In fact, most of the “grammar questions” you’ll see posted online pertain to orthography; this number probably doubles in spaces for writers specifically.

If you’re a native speaker of English, your grammar is probably flawless and unremarkable for the purposes of writing prose. Instead, orthography refers to the set rules governing spelling, punctuation, and whitespace. There are a few things you should know about orthography:

English has no single orthography. You already know spelling and punctuation differ from country to country, but did you know it can even differ from publisher to publisher? Some newspapers will set parenthetical statements apart with em dashes—like this, with no spaces—while others will use slightly shorter dashes – like this, with spaces – to name just one example.

Orthography is boring, and nobody cares about it or knows what it is. For most readers, orthography is “invisible”. Readers pay attention to the words on a page, not the paper itself; in much the same way, readers pay attention to the meaning of a text and not the orthography, which exists only to convey that meaning.

That doesn’t mean it’s not important. Actually, that means it’s of the utmost importance. Because orthography can only be invisible if it meets the reader’s expectations.

You need to learn how to format dialogue into paragraphs. You need to learn when to end a quote with a comma versus a period. You need to learn how to use apostrophes, colons and semicolons. You need to learn these things not so you can win meaningless brownie points from your English teacher for having “Good Grammar”, but so that your prose looks like other prose the reader has consumed.

If you printed a novel on purple paper, you’d have the reader wondering: why purple? Then they’d be focusing on the paper and not the words on it. And you probably don’t want that! So it goes with orthography: whenever you deviate from standard practices, you force the reader to work out in their head whether that deviation was intentional or a mistake. Too much of that can destroy the flow of reading and prevent the reader from getting immersed.

You may chafe at this idea. You may think these “rules” are confusing and arbitrary. You’re correct to think that. They’re made the fuck up! What matters is that they were made the fuck up collaboratively, by thousands of writers over hundreds of years. Whether you like it or not, you are part of that collaboration: you’re not the first person to write prose, and you can’t expect yours to be the first prose your readers have ever read.

That doesn’t mean “never break the rules”, mind you. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with English orthography, then you are free to break it as you please. Knowing what’s expected gives you the power to do unexpected things on purpose. And that’s the really cool shit.

5. You’re allowed to say the boobs were big if the story is about how big the boobs were

Nobody is saying this. Only I am brave enough to say it.

Well, bye!

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.