#Which. I mean. That tag is POPULOUS on this blog! But it's weird to think I've spent 13 years rebageling Teen Titans stuff on this site

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

You can tell I've grown more mature as I grew older because I used to be this indignant mess of fire whenever someone suggested Raven was Doing Something Wrong.

And now I'm like. Delighted and smiling at how an entire whole page (maybe two?) was dedicated to how bad Raven is at bowling.

/hj. But only half.

[ganondoodle]

Oh man I saw your totk issues post and I agree 100%!! Those are all things that have really bothered me about playing totk, and things that made playing it not nearly as fun (the dungeons, the shrines, the building, etc).

Especially the map!! When I tell you I was so disappointed by the maps on totk, I was hoping for something new! It really just feels like a modded botw, not an official sequel.

I was wondering what your thoughts are on the concept of “what if they had sent link to the past instead”? So the surface map would feature huge differences in the land forms and buildings that exist, and we’d get to see more ganon whenever he visits Hyrule, or go out to the desert to see Gerudo town, etc.

If they really wanted no sheika tech, they could also just have it being newly built? And you could introduce the new characters and such, etc etc.

(I also think the past champions are such a missed opportunity? If botw is about grief and loneliness, and finding hope in the hopeless, and Totk is about coming together despite that, it could have been really interesting if Link had gone to the past! They could have used the past setting as an eerie reminder to what Link and Zelda had lost when the Calamity struck!)

THAT BEING SAID: I’m not as familiar with the legend of Zelda lore, and haven’t played totk very much! I wanted to know your thoughts on this because you seem to have a lot of story and game mechanic knowledge that could explain why this could be a bad/good idea!

(Plus, your discussions are always super interesting to read, as is your custom totk lore, so I’d love to know what you think🩷)

I’m sorry if you’ve already answered an ask like this! If that’s the case, feel free to point that out and I’ll go through your ask tag if you have one:) I hope you have a great day!⭐️

Hi!

im glad you enjoy my rants, i often feel like im being overly mean but tbh were else could i just rant as much as my heart desires without getting spammed by annoying people (certainly not on twitter lol)

i have talked alot, and i mean ALOT, about totk and my issues with it, both lore and gameplay wise, i dont claim to be an expert on any, though i am an old zelda fan and aspiring gamedev, i really only talk about what i feel about it, what i think about it, and by all means im biased as hell xD

if you dont know yet, the "ganondoodles rants" tag is where all my rants go, so if you are interested in reading more on my totk thoughts thats the way to search (given tumblrs search in blog works ..)

and to answers your question, i have touched on it briefly, sending link back in time before the shiekah tech existed would have been an easy way to excuse how they jsut got .. rid of it, bc they didnt, it literally didnt exist yet- and for reusing the map- though that argument falls a little flat bc ... they coud have already done that in present totk, like i brought up in one of said rants, things like flooding gerudo desert, collapsing death mountain, drying out zoras domain etc, and changing the location of the main populations would have already done alot without having to redo the map in its entirety;

the little changes to map itself really wouldnt that big of a deal if they didnt also send you to the EXACT same locations AND repeat the SAME LOCATIONS AGAIN but in the underground, like thats a fact i have talked about multiple times bc its so illogical in every way, anywhere theres a settlement on the surface theres a bigger mine below, its so stupid, the shrines conenct to a lightroot, the same, again, you dont need to explore bc theres nothing TO explore (its also extra weird bc theres one below taburasa (tarrey town) which .... link literally build with dumsda (hudson) a few years ago .. unless that got retconned too idk wth do i know anymore honestly- AND it makes the sonau extra weird bc why the hell do they have a bigass mine under every settlement ESPECIALLY UNDER GERUDO TOWN like, that just adds to my suspicions towards them)

anyway, link to the past was the point and yes, it could have solved a few issues (mainly shiekah tech and the whole "story" taking place AGAIN in the past completely disconnected from you the player) i personally am not so much a fan of it, but that mostly comes down to me just not liking time travel, i dont like going back in time, i want to play and do things in the here and now, i want to repair the damages of the calamity, find out its origins, maybe fix that too, i love to learn about past stuff too, but that more in text, no literal flashback (unless done well), i want to connect to the past but it also holds alot of mystery that maybe shouldnt be touched upon, some mysteries and unkowns are much more interesting when left as such, i want to THINK about things and come to conclusions that are logical and makes sense in hindsight even if it wasnt clear at the start, i dont want information and what to think about it told to my face over and over like im stupid

after botw i really didnt care much about the past, maybe about the acient hero who alot of people specualted to be of gerudo origin due to its red hair- which also got a monkeys paw curled bc in totk they do sth with but its so stupid and insulting that i do not accept it as canon, say what they want, there are no dog people anywhere in the past nor present botw/totk wtf is that i hate it- and its not even .. why is that the reward for that, it has literally NOTHING TO DO WITH TOTK ITSELF I COULD YELLLL AAAARGH

main point is that really, i wanted to explore the past .. in the present, i hoped to find broken old shiekah structures, old labs and maybe some left over damage and records from when the old king persecuted the shiekah for their tech, i wanted to know where the ancient energy the shiekah used was coming from, what the boss arena in the middle of hyrule castle really was- so many things just discarded and acted like they never happened or mattered; i dont want to travel into the past, i want to discover whats left of it, piece it together, discover dark secrets you can ask no one about bc all that knew about it are long gone- thats what intrigued me about botw, it felt like there was so much left to discover only for totk to throw it all away and just do its own thing .. but not commit to that hard enough either so its neither its own thing nor a sequel-

.. that wasnt really what you wanted to know was it? xD sorry i tend to ramble on if someone seems to give me permission to

to sum it up, i think it COULD work, sending link to the past instead, if done well, but so could canon totk have been, it could have been done well but wasnt for reasons i dont know and tbh even fear bc i worry its sets a dark future ahead of zelda; i personalyl am just not a fan of time travel so i dont have that much to say to it :O

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

Hello, I have a tiny question.

Lately I've started to publish gifs and the thing is that I don't see a lot of people reblogging them. I've been wondering if I make them in a bad way or is it just that they need time to get more attention?

As the fellow gif maker I think you should have the answer. Thank you in advance.

this is such a precious ask that also kind of makes me sad. and a very good and real question.

without even seeing them, i'm like 99.9% sure it isn't your gifs that are the problem.

this has been a thing that a lot of people have been complaining about, actually. i've seen so many posts basically yelling at everybody to reblog from creators because otherwise people get discouraged and stop posting, that the lack of reblogs is slowly killing tumblr. especially if people come here hoping to meet/interact with others over common interests and they don't get that. the loneliness is real.

i mean, this place used to be more populated too, so less people is probably part of it.

it also depends on whether you're posting things related to a big fandom or a small fandom, or if it's not really fandom specific stuff.

in a bigger fandom, reblogs should be more common but some people still complain about the reblogs/likes ratio, with most notes being likes instead of reblogs.

in a small and/or nonexistent fandom, you'd probably be like me with around an average of 0-4 total notes on a typical gifset, reblogs usually being very rare(not counting the times i've reblogged my own posts).

some fandoms might have more rebloggers in them than others regardless of whether it's big or small, depending on the people in it.

if your gifs aren't always fandom specific, it might be hit or miss where an occasional post might blow up, while most of the rest might get very little. (in 2020, i was making gifs of various bands, i made some of a guns n roses video and one gifset has over 400 notes, over 100 of them being reblogs, while the rest of the gifsets from that video have like 15 notes total. i never know what will happen, but now i know people love guns n roses)

if you're posting on a new blog, you could just need time for people to find your posts. be sure it's all tagged so people can find them, especially in case anybody is following a specific tag.

it's also fine for you to reblog your own posts to bring them back into the light once in a while. some people feel weird about doing self-reblogs, but otherwise your followers might not even know they're there unless they're put back on their dashboard or if they're specifically searching it(which is sometimes unsuccessful with tumblr's search problems). some might miss them when they were first posted depending on the time of day and their timezones and how active their own dashboard is, things like that. i reblog my own stuff all the time, especially if i have something new in mind to say about it later on or if i'm just browsing my own archive for fun. i made them, i figure i'm allowed to have fun with them if i feel like it.

if you're making the gifs just because you enjoy making gifs, just keep doing what you love doing, don't worry about the notes so much. eventually you will attract the right people. sometimes it can just take a long time to get there, especially in tumblr's current state where it's harder for people to discover you when nothing's getting reblogged by other people. but if you decide it doesn't feel worth it, i wouldn't blame you because i've felt that too, many times. i'll probably feel it again eventually. but i have a few different reasons i continue making and posting gifs despite that.

it feels weird too when things happen like, you'll be posting about one thing for a long time and then one of your followers will reblog one of the posts one day and it turns out one of THEIR followers is very interested and had no idea your blog even existed for all that time. it's like. HOW LONG HAS THAT PERSON BEEN JUST SLIGHTLY OUT OF REACH?

but everybody's blog is their own, i personally wouldn't ever tell somebody what they should or shouldn't post on their own blog. it's just sad to me that so many people seem so separated these days. i hope that changes and people start wanting to be involved in each other's things more without being pressured to. but also, this is the social anxiety website.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm really glad that the / wank is something I've only seen on your blog, but it's really silly seeing people go, "This must mean the founders of AO3 see sex and romance as the same thing!" / being used to indicate two things =/= those things being the same. The word qora is used to mean both snow and the color black in my native language. That doesn't mean we think they're the same thing. You're supposed to have enough intelligence to be able to go, "Well, the rest of the sentence is about a storm, and it's not night, so snow is probably the right meaning." Likewise, even as a teenager, even though English isn't my first language, I understood Character A/Character B + noncon to mean A and B are fucking and there's noncon involved, and it never occurred to me once to go, "Ah-ha! This must mean the author/the people who made tags/the people who made the / sign think rape and romance are identical!"

The kind of weird places American minds go is unsettling. No one thinks sex and romance are the same thing, but especially no one thinks that in fandom, where we're always discussing romance and sex and things like that. There is no group of people on Earth less likely to think those things are the same than this. And yet Americans love this idea of the ignorant masses vs them, the only smart ones, so they just swallow the lie without questioning the batshit insanity of the premise. They don't ask for a source or citation. They genuinely go, "Yeah, it makes sense people would think love and fucking are the same, including love and rape." and never once does it occur to them that no, it really, really doesn't.

I read recently that half of the US' population aged 30 and under read at the level of a fifth grader, which is roughly 11-12 year olds. They struggle to read chapter books, according to the data. I didn't believe that prior to this, but seeing people struggle to comprehend a word or symbol can have two different, unrelated meanings... I think maybe there are some of you who are at that level. Not all, probably not as high a percentage as has been reported, but definitely, some Americans don't know how to read.

No wonder Americans struggle to learn a second language. If the idea one word can have two meanings without conflating the two meanings is this mind-blowing, being handed new vocabulary must present a huge challenge.

--

To be fair, that particular "wank" is one person vs. the rest of the internet.

We suck at languages because people in large monolingual territories generally do, and getting good at foreign languages requires a significant motivation, like not getting dinner, not just vague ideas that the language will be useful one day. Memorizing vocab is the least important bit, frankly.

Not to defend US education, which leaves much to be desired, but this is just a moronic take on language learning.

[thepowerisyouth]

MONEY / FINANCE STRESS CONTENT WARNING, this next line is unfortunately quite stressful about money so this was an important warning for me to add:

This is also less for the random strangers on the internet who have no reason to trust my advice but more for the 10-15 people I know personally who trust my money advice based on prior experience and Ive sent them my blog link in the last month or two

US stock market is about to tank. On a global perspective its stupidly overpriced because markets like China are hitting 5 year lows (as in we've increased our stock market over 2x since "COVID lows", but their market is even lower than it was then.

Timing is hard but it is entirely possible yesterday was the peak of the market. Might also not tank for 6 months.

Market psychology is fucking weird tho so please absolutely dont 'short' anything, which is basically the same as 'buying puts'. Michael Burry nearly bankrupted all his friends, family, and random investors by insisting on 'shorting' things based on knowledge of impending crisis.

Just sell everything. I mean literally everything. Bond etfs might go up but youd have to have eyes glued to the charts to sell in time. Gold wont do, neither will bitcoin. Their negative correlation to stocks isnt really a thing anymore.

Get every etf, stock, whatever into cash in the brokerage account, then move it out of the banks/brokerage firms and into something physically in front of you because we are, in fact, in another 'historical period of bank runs' its just not quite at the peak yet.

Not trying to increase anxiety beyond nessecary-- its just that any, single bank can immediately freeze your money-- leaving it up to the Federal Government to pay you back-- and it might possibly be the case that youd have to rely on whats called a "bank bail in" to see your savings again.

Not a fun situation to be in, even if it wont happen to most people its just safe practice to do this during a "historical period of bank runs"

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

This blog is basically my diary of my thoughts (suprise suprise). But Im an open book, privileged (but poor) little white boy with complex societal/generational abuse and very little home problems so lets fucking go theres a whole mormon cargo van to unpack

Definitely recommend tags Im terrible at them.

---

To those reading this, if you have ever met me in real-life or on the internet than you have taught me varying degrees of information which can be randomly retrieved by my brain at any time depending on current CPU performance. Thoughts of my loving husband have occupied my headspace probably 95% of my time since 14 so he has absolutely taught me at least 100x more than anyone else in the world.

When I say "I", oftentimes Im thinking about "me and my husband", or even sometimes "me and my friends/family", or even sometimes "me and society"--- but I am not always 100% aware of the current headspace environment and/or beliefs of the minds of those around me without feedback

---

There are currently over 8 billion individual varieties of the global human language spoken within the mind. Lets start translating them all. Misunderstood words become mean labels.

I fucking hate mean labels

"Math wiz" = racism and/or classism and/or gender shit. Fuck that shit

When a person is niched off into one part of an 8 billion population human society, it becomes impossible to not "live in a bubble". Bubbles change in size constantly even if not visibly observed. Bubbles can be different sizes depending on your current day-to-day thoughts of your own society. Bubbles must pop. Enlightenment implies life only gets better the more times ya pop and lock it

My path away from purely mathematics, logic, and scientific theory began when I met my husband, and for the first time in my life it became important to me not to be an asshole to everyone around me

Ive been told (only after I started dating my traumatized husband tho and helped him heal a lot) that I'm a natural communicator-- and all my life I found myself listening and learning to everything and everyone around me trying to understand both their and my own motivations-- then I like to garble them up and spit 'em out. My memory recall ability is wonky tho and fluctuates highly with nutrient intake-- I'll get into that later

I wish I could have a million years to read every blog on tumblr. I really do. Connecting & communating is extremely important for understanding one another but it takes time

I had an extremely unique childhood (who hasnt lol), enough so to isolate myself quite a lot through sheer dumb luck. My mom is also everyone's favorite school teacher so of course I was learning a lot from a young age. Luckily I glued myself to the first person who wanted to glue themselves to me equally & we grew exponentially closer to eternity

If its still not clear: my husband and I are bored and love chatting with people, but like most internet loving freaks my mouth don't work sometimes well but my fingies do. My ears got fluff a lot but I got eyes for LEDs like a hawk. Wish they werent LED tho

I also have a naturally short sleep cycle (i.e. extra time for this), and I really wont be offended or weirded out by someone reading through and liking 20+ or whatever of my posts at once randomly. Stories are supposed to be read in chunks, and I think of this blog as a story & also workspace for my thoughts that Id love to see which chapters everyone has read through. Also I love (and only respond positively to) positive feedback, yet also suggestions for ways to improve my "theorums". As in, good faith discussions are totally welcome on any post.

For my 50 year old parents reading my blog so lovingly in their limited evening time-- you can sort by tags to see what topics your familiar with, if you play around with the search function while on my page. Mom. Show dad how to do it

In the very, very bottom of my blog I dont even think I managed to tag shit properly-- but its the roughdraft workings of the philosophy, as well as my own logical framework for answering lifes questions. Its 2 months ago so I might not even be writing according to my own works down there anymore idk I change fast sometimes

Last thing for now here is that I was always criticized by teachers for not showing my work, and for not reviewing my tests before turning in, and I pushed back hard because nearly every time I went over and corrected a mistake-- I saw I most often got it right the first fucking time on a pure hunch. I act on impulse when I'm not meditating mostly for efficiency purposes because I believe I'm correct, but remain open to emotionally positive feedback so I can help remove all doubt.

-------

This might turn into my 'life story' post, as its already going there. Heres what I have so far in the way of my knowledge of my family before I was brought into existence, and my "earliest memories":

Family context:

I dont know jack shit. Nobody talks about it at all.

Here's my own observations Ive made using the framework and perceptive filters I was given--

My whole family is white Texans.

Ancestory is slaveowners of course, further back is a very likely direct parent-child descendent line from the most famous inbred british royalty of the 13th century i.e. King John, whose brother was the arab genociding Richard.

I would call my immediate family as upper poverty class. Its more like poverty with extra privileges cause mental health stigma was the only thing holding them back not other shit too.

As children we had a lot of very privileged opportunities because my parents made a lot of sacrifices to try and bring us back up the class ladder. Lets look into that generational trauma issue

My dads parents (born in the early 40s, dont know the year exactly. I think '43 or '44) were more upper middle class, pretty high income. Owned an insurance business that was very successful by the early 2000s at least. My grandpa is described to me as a "monster" and "violently abusive". I have a single memory of him screaming at me as a young child and I was cowering under a desk, so I really believe it. No other stories at all to provide context.

-- I gotta split this section off I realized I wrote the next thing about post-me context Ill need to move this part lower down later--

My grandpa got early onset dementia, my dad didnt notice in time, and my grandpa bankrupted his successful company and lost several million of dollars to "scammers and sexy ladies."

My dad found out around 2015-16 or so. He told me a little bit after telling me my grandparents were getting divorced. My dad managed to scrape together about $200,000 which is being sued for by the IRS actively.

(He split that money in two, and entrusted me tell him how to invest half in safe value stocks that I handpicked as well as a calculated risk allocation to bonds which we sold for 30% profit the second the market crashed. He gave the other half to a brokerage advisor. I never met the advisor but saw the results. Dont get me started on how the other dude did with that money-- we started this endeavor in January 2020.)

Personally I also dont believe that its possible to spend an entire fortune on scammers and strippers, so Id love to see his books and figure out what the hell went wrong with that asshole. I have a hunch I know something more than anyone else ("Enron", guys, we're talking about an insurance company in HOUSTON, in the 2000s) but I will never be sure without the books.

----

Back to other family--

I do not know a single thing about my grandma on my dads side. She raised me quite a lot, but yeah I literally have only heard her life described to me as "she was a housewife"

On my moms side, my Mimi (also born 1940s but slightly younger so I think 1946 or 1947) came from a divorced, upper middle class family. In 1964-65, She and her step mom both got knocked up the same year so she watched her divorced dad remarry to said step mom when she was 18-19 and getting a shotgun marriage herself, so you can imagine what that was like. The "biological" of the two moms was a very good mom and very queer from what I hear. She died when I was a baby, from lung cancer. Thats all I know. My mimi raised me quite a lot, nearly equally as much as my mom did

My mom's dad, my Papa, came from a rural farming family in East Texas. Dont know much else of anything, but he and his siblings were named "Billy, Bobby, and Betty". As in, they are what everyone likes to call "hicks"

--

Moving onto my direct parents now. I know a little more about them of course, but since we're getting closer in age to the present-- I think itll be easier to describe my understanding as common stereotypes. If its unclear what I mean definitely feel free to ask, but I'll probably say "I dont really know"

Not much else is relevant other than knowing that my moms family was the mormon one, but that as soon as my dad was love-bombed by the church he joined to. Mormons were also different in the 90s I'm told.

My dad struggled with being one of the "crazy schizos" of the 90s. As in, very traumatized, upset, and gaslit by the government and his parents. Must have done a damn good job dealing with it by the time he was in his late 20s and I popped out cause he was never a "bad dad" to me at all. Definitely yelled and was more angry at times, but less than any other friends parents Ive ever met, and from what I remember he came into my room at night and apologized to me literally every single time within like 5-10 minutes. I know pretty much nothing about him pre-me. He was a tradesman my whole life and specialized in remodeling kitchens & bathrooms (the 'dirty work of construction'). All his initial clientele were the rich people my grandma lived near and was friends with.

My mom would have been extremely queer-presenting and posting on tumblr if born in the year 2000, but was born in early 70s, and was a raegan teen in high-school in Texas during the satanic panic-- she presents completely cis, straight, but has body dysmorphia issues. Thats about you need to know about those issues I'm sure my tumblr folks can assume the rest and be perfectly correct. Cause thats about all I know too and I'm assuming the rest about my own mother

--- Earliest memories

I think a lot of people face doubt about their own earliest memories, maybe hearing the way I connect the images of these events in my head to my emotions I felt will help others do the same.

----

Two disclosers about me & my current healthcare discoveries before moving on

1) My only "major" childhood trauma is loneliness. I have a partner now (started dating early high school, nearing 10 years together now) who was just as lonely and we are glued to each others side constantly, and have made our life work great that way. So don't feel too bad reading this, I'm only able to write it down because Ive healed that trauma and can dig this stuff up with no issues to validate the emotions I felt even as a child

1) I believe I have a genetic trait that is only just getting discovered. There are something like 6 discovered mutations that hold this similar trait so far, and its just basically chronic insomia.

It being a genetic trait tracks with how my mom describes me as never settling into a normal sleep pattern at 6 months old, having absurd amounts of nightmares and death anxiety keeping me up at night as a child, and I still dont sleep at any given time. I average 2 hours less sleep than my husband, who averages 7-8 now that he isnt actively being abused at home.

Going to get sequenced but even if negative I'd probably just be a 7th mutation, as they only found the other 6 genes via case study.

The scientists whove discovered it call it "Familial Natural Short Sleeper", if you desire to look it up. They describe the trait like its the best possible thing in the world. Well... terminally chronic insomia is not the best thing in THIS world thats for sure.

---------

My "earliest memories"

These arent ranked by time accurately of course. Took enough effort digging through my brain to turn them up, not like Ive got a 2003 calendar stuffed in here as well.

I did do my best to sort by first memory but it also might be sorted by the order at which I recovered the memories as being one of my "earliest" when I was a child and asked such things

1. Pure emptiness. I can only describe it as dissociation. I can remember nothing about the environment around me, except feeling suddenly sucked out of it, seeing only darkness, feeling almost a ringing in my ears and the deepest dread possible. This same feeling followed me in life for a little while, but started to take more visual shape when I was an adolescent, until at some point I would see myself sitting in a chair alone in a room that is infinitely sized but that slowly gets darker the further out you go. I cant remember what exact "real-world" event caused this feeling to ever happen each time it did. I just can remember having it happen occasionally when I was awake and doing things. Definitely dissociation. (If you are willing to believe me further I think its just probably "lights out" and being scared of that)

1. Riding a mattress down the stairs. I kind of remember two images, one is the tunnel vision of going high speed down the stairs and the other would be from looking back up at the stairs when I was done going down. Totally fun, probably my first rollar coaster ride. I might remember my siblings laughing too but it wouldnt be because I can remember the actual laughing-- but I can remember feeling the joy of being in a group of people laughing. At the time, my parents were selling the house so thats why I also remember it being a completely empty carpeted room that we were riding down into

2. My brother smashing his head repeatedly into the refrigerator for 'fun' and someone saying "wow he has a hard head" or something along those lines. I was learning english I cant remember exactly what they said but that was definitely the meaning I took from their words. I think this memory is strong, because I was truly very curious as to why my brother was just running at full speed, head down, and headbutting a hard surface. The words someone said after that must have been one of my first 'answers'

3. Watching my siblings play in rare Houston snow. Not much remembering there actually. Probably just thought it was mezmorizing to watch as I just really remember a picture and feeling peace

4. Will add more later.

[propalahramota]

Hello, mutuals, my kith and kin, time for a super specific historical beef!

I know, it's been a while.

I stumbled on the post below in the Ukraine tag and I was very surprised by it. Usually when I go to that tag, I'm annoyed by pro-russian bigots and tankies, but this time I was annoyed by a stupid Normanist take! Fun!

This blog, which gives me bad vibes so I used a screenshot instead of reblogging, claims that the Kingdom of Kyiv is a 100 percent Viking-made, and those dirty Slavs had no ability to govern themselves.

I say: Bullshit!

And let me make it very clear that I don't agree on anything with putin. He is a psycho and war criminal who uses his own pseudohistorical delusions to justify his imperialist conquest. Both him and the author of this post are wrong.

Let me tell you why:

Our main source on the early Kyivan Rus is The Primary Chronicle by Nestor, also known as The Tale of Bygone Years. It's not a contemporary source. Nestor wrote decades after the most recent of the events he's describing, using the stories he had heard himself as well as earlier Byzantine chronicles. Thus, as you can imagine, it's not super accurate in places, and sometimes the author leaves pretty big gaps in the narrative that historians have worked to fill in.

For example, King Igor (aka Ingvarr) came to rule Kyiv after the death of his predecessor Oleg the Clairvoyant (aka Helgi), who himself had come to rule Kyiv after two guys called Askold and Dir. Nestor calls Igor Rurik's son but timeline-wise the math isn't mathing, so it's much more likely that he was Oleg's son, or nephew, or something like that. Igor marries Olga (aka also Helgi).

And then something really weird happens.

Ingvarr and Helgi have a son with a super unusual for a Viking aristocrat name - Svyatoslav.

And then Svyatoslav has three sons named Oleg (one more Helgi), Yaropolk, and Vladymir.

Vladymir ends up taking the throne and, being a massive manwhore, has a bunch of kids - most of them have Slavic names and some have Greek names. Vladymir is succeeded by Yaroslav the Wise.

It may not seem like a big deal but the King of Kyiv and his wife, who were both Viking nobility, suddenly decided to name their heir and only child a Slavic name. And after him, the old traditional Northern names completely go out of use in the dynasty.

Which means that somewhere in the early Xth century, which is not at all long after the establishment of the Rurikid dynasty in Kyiv (mid IXth century), there was a monumental shift in the Kyivan court politics that urged the foreigners on the throne to make a public effort to assimilate with the local population. We don't know what happened. Nestor never told us because he either didn't know himself or didn't think it was worth mentioning, but this monumental shift is right there, between the lines.

And you are going to tell me that the local Kyiv elites had no say in the government? That Rus Statehood was completely imported and foreign? That the Kingdom of Kyiv was invented by the Scandinavian conquerors?

I say: read the fucking sources, twats!

[with-the-flickers-of-light]

Ok, so.

[deep breath]

Since this is a Taylor Swift fan blog (even if it's one with zero (0) followers), it feels important to address my thoughts on the Matty Healy situationship.

Warning, this is going to be a post critical of the relationship. I absolutely do not believe that being a fan means that I have to support all of Swift's decisions. Also, content warning for swearing, light discussion of exploitative/abusive pornography, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and just general shittiness.

If you want anything tagged or fact-checked, please let me know!

Before diving in, my general thoughts on celebrity relationships:

As a general rule, I don't believe in speculating about celebrities' relationships. I am only really looking into Healy now since the publicization of the Swift/Healy relationship seems to be quite intentional at this point. And while I don't believe in holding women to a higher standard than men, or in erasing their professional achievements to gossip about their personal lives, I also believe that we as consumers get to choose who we support. Professionals are entitled to privacy, yes, but "privacy" is not a free pass to ignore moral wrongs.

For me, my basic stance is that I understand "The Man", but that many of the behaviors discussed therein should not be appropriate for anyone, whether a man or not. So no, this isn't about me being a misogynist and overriding Swift's professional achievements with gossip about her love life. This is about me pointing out that no one is free from accountability -- whether or not the media holds you accountable, somebody will.

I do believe the rich and famous have at least some responsibility to do good in the world. You have privilege, you have a platform. Hell, the world could refuse to ever give you another cent and you'd probably remain better-off for the rest of your life than most people. And especially if you choose to cultivate parasocial relationships with your fans, you have to realize that making shitty choices will feel like personal betrayals to them. As a celebrity, you know that your public decisions will be held under scrutiny and that they will impact the general population, because you hold influence.

And finally, on the nature of romantic relationships: I identify as aromantic-asexual, so I will be the first to admit that I do not understand all the urges that go into dubiously intelligent relationships. Nonetheless, I hold that while attraction may be involuntary, a relationship is a choice. (There are, of course, cases of abuse where the "relationship" is really not a choice on one side, but based on all we've seen I do not think Swift/Healy is one of them.)

That said, we arrive at the issue of Healy.

Healy is not the kind of person I am interested in supporting, financially or otherwise. I'm not going to list off all his crap -- it's well-known enough to be on Wikipedia at this point. (Which I hear is in a bit of an editing war? Never a good sign, y'all.) This post is about my response, because you can find the facts elsewhere (and you've probably already read them elsewhere).

If he was middle-of-the-road questionable -- like, if all he did was eat raw meat -- it could be excused. Whatever, I'm not going to ever be a fan of that, but I'm also not going to give a damn aside from doing a double-take at the headline and then sighing.

The licking fingers and kissing fans thing... that's. A, uh. It's a choice. That's the point where I'm kind of like... what? But sure, I guess you could argue that it's a morally gray area, because it's weird, and dubiously consensual, but I dunno, fans could be into that or something? Definitely not something I'm into, but pending further investigation on the case, I could bring myself to just roll my eyes at another trashbag.

And then we get into his recent, shitty statements. "It was just a joke/ironic/satire" is a bullshit excuse and in the year 2023, we all know it. If you're a celebrity who has a PR team, I sure as hell know that you know it. I am willing to forgive misguided jokes if they were from a bygone era and the offender has since apologized for the harm they caused.

Hell, maybe I could bring myself to accept the "ironic Nazi salute"; sure, maybe he was trying to bring awareness to Trump/Kanye-gate by drawing that parallel. I could convince myself that he really was acting in good faith, because there is a maybe possibly potentially decent outcome he could've been angling at.

To be clear, I don't believe it. I think we all know to not do the Nazi salute, even in satire.

But even if I did, well.

I am not willing to forgive Healy "joking" about masturbating to exploitative pornography of black women in the year 2023, without even an apology (to the best of my knowledge). I'm not going to speculate on whether or not he really was joking, but whether it was a fact or a joke, it's fucking disgusting. Whether it's a stage personality, a joke, an ironic comment, or satire, if it's you causing harm, then it's shitty. At best, it's ignorant and reckless; at worst, it's... I don't even know what to say. And again, in the year 2023, it's not hard to tell what could be harmful in said "joke" about porn, so I don't put much stock in the "ignorant" column.

There is no possible good outcome from a "joke" like that, which means there is no possible positive spin for me to try to play. There is no reason to be that shitty.

The evidence is clear and simple, and it leads to the conclusion that supporting Healy is not something I can be at all interested in or tolerant of.

What about the good things he's said?

Well, let's keep this short and sweet: human decency is not a transaction. Good actions don't cancel out bad actions, except for when the good action is a fucking good apology that genuinely seeks to make reparations for the bad action.

Okay, but why should Swift take responsibility for that?

Straight up, whether or not Swift is a "feminist" is irrelevant to this conversation -- this is the standard I apply to people regardless of what beliefs they claim (although it would come with an extra helping of hypocrisy if you do want to claim to support women and POC). What's relevant is that she has chosen to publicly and positively associate herself with a known piece of shit. And being in a relationship with Healy is tacitly supporting his views. There is no way she -- a self-proclaimed "mastermind", a "calculated/smart businesswoman" -- doesn't know this.

There is no professional benefit to associating with Healy, either. The David O'Russell movie could be hand-waved with "it was a professional opportunity". Where the Crawdads Sing could be reasoned away as "separating art from artist". But her dating life is 100% a personal choice. The only benefit to dating Healy is dating Healy. There's no other opportunity here, just the chance to spend time with and tacitly support a dirtbag.

(I know that she knows that "they're nice to me" does not magically make a shitty man a good person. You know how I know that? Because that's what she said during Scooter-gate. So there are no excuses here.)

She is a grown woman fully capable of cognitively processing the consequences of publicly supporting Healy. I don't care what she says in "Don't Blame Me", I am blaming her, because it's her own damn choice. She is making the choice, consciously and with no other benefits, to publicly take the side of someone known for racist and sexist behaviors.

And that's something that we can absolutely hold her accountable for.

Because at this point, supporting Swift is also tacitly affirming Healy's problematic behavior.

So how does this situation resolve?

There are 3 parties in this situation: Swift, Healy, and the fanbase. At least one of us has to step up and do better.

Swift could wake up, realize just how bad this is, and do better.

Healy could have an epiphany where he realizes just how bad his actions have been, and make a concerted effort to do better and make reparations.

We as a fanbase could walk away, because we are unwilling to tolerate the bullshit.

At this point, it seems kind of unlikely that wither Swift or Healy are going to change for the better. That leaves it up to us.

And now for the tricky part: deciding what to do as a fan.

Blech. It's easy enough to come to the conclusion that Swift's recent behavior has been unpalatable. It's harder to figure out what to do about that.

As fans, I know that there are a lot of emotions involved. There's the parasocial relationship that you want to hang onto; there's the importance her music may have played for you personally; there's basic appreciation for the technical construction of her work. And I know there's definitely the undying hope that maybe this is all a misunderstanding and maybe she really is better than this.

Either way, to me, there are 3 steps to getting clean from supporting problematic artists:

Stop public support. There's a time for silence, and there's a time to fucking speak now. Stop wearing merchandise, or repurpose it. Don't keep running a stan account as if nothing has happened.

Stop active financial support. Don't put money into her. Don't buy albums, merchandise, or concert tickets.

Stop passive financial support. That's streaming on Spotify, things where you might not be paying, but she's still getting money.

And then the final step is severing emotional connections. Stop singing her music for fun; stop listening to already-purchased music. I don't include this in the 3-step process because in my opinion, it's not a prerequisite to cut out a problematic artist's art to stop supporting the problematic artist (unless that art is reflective of their shittiness). What you choose to do in private without any interaction with the artist is your own business. It impacts no one but you if you continue listening to your existing downloads of Swift's music.

With all that in mind, for now, I'm not deactivating this blog. I'm going to let my queue finish itself off. And then I'm probably going to write a few reflections on some of her more questionable lyrics, because I do think there are some... interesting things in there that deserve to be discussed.

When all's said and done, though, this blog is probably going to go into indefinite hiatus, because I'm not interested in running a hate-blog, nor am I willing to continue running a fan-blog.

So. Yeah. That's where I'm at.

[rwby-redux]

idk what your spoiler rules for your blog are, but i HATE the name "The Ever After" for Remnant's Wonderland equivalent, its so flavorless and unimaginative but i also cant think of any other ideas, do you have any?

Re: spoilers for the show (and side media), I try to tag things whenever possible (especially in the immediate week after the episode airs; anything after that is fair game, I think). I’ll typically add a readmore to posts as a courtesy.

Since the Ever After got namedropped in V9.E2, I think it’s safe to discuss at this point.

And…yeah. I really hate how everything about the Ever After is rip-off Wonderland. It feels like it lacks an identity beyond aping the aesthetic of the book, without considering the fact that Wonderland’s weirdness was a metaphor for a child navigating the incomprehensible and sometimes arbitrary rules/etiquette of adulthood. Its nonsensical setting exists to support the underlying commentary. RWBY’s decision to cherry-pick Wonderland’s design, without using it to reinforce some sort of narrative commentary, makes it little more than a shallow knock-off.

The alliterative episode titles aren’t helping matters, either.

If it were up to me, I would have axed the entire premise of the Ever After. But if I had to give it some sort of alternative name… I would avoid anything that feels evocative of Wonderland and fairy tales in general. Nothing whimsical or romantic.

I’d likely give the Ever After two names—an endonym (a name that the residents of this place use) and an exonym (a name given to it by outsiders).

It’s bizarre that the people who live here call it the “Ever After,” when the reason why Team RWBY called it that is because it has a fairy tale vibe to it. (See: Blake’s comment at the end of Episode 1.) As in, nothing about this place feels “normal.” But for the people who live here, this is their version of normal. So why would they call it something that alludes to a fairy tale (a folklore genre populated by things that are unreal)?

Timothy Hickson does a great job talking about place names here. If you have the time, I highly recommend you watch it!

If we wanted to create a name that feels at least somewhat believable, maybe come up with a handful of prefixes and suffixes with assigned meanings. Then combine those root words to form endonyms.

A great example of this is The Lord of the Rings, where minas is the Sindarin word for “tower.” Tolkien uses minas in the names of several locations, like Minas Tirith (“Tower of the Guard”) and Annúminas (“West Tower”).

As for what Team RWBY would call this place (at least initially, after they first arrive)… If pressed, I would call it “The Hinterlands.” There are two reasons why.

Traditionally, a hinterland refers to any area that’s inland from a coast. When Ruby first arrives in the Ever After, she wakes up on a beach. Immediately she begins to travel away from the shore, and into the jungle further inland.

The second definition of a hinterland (and my other reason for choosing this name) is any area that is “unknown, unexplored, vague, or ill-defined," which nicely compliments the hostility and mystique of this place.

Not only does hinterlands work in the literal sense, but in a figurative one, too.

[starpuncher]

so i've been doing some yaoi archaeology recently regarding mid 2010s homestuck fandom. presumably we've all been there and the audience is still with me.

what's striking to me about perusing these ancient cave drawings is how differently i experience them in the present compared to my impression of them in the past, at 12-15, which i felt at the time was significantly younger than both homestuck's target audience and the fandom population at large. my memory of homestuck fandom is that it was this bottomless cornucopia of incredible fanart; i've said to friends in conversation that i didn't think i would ever see a fandom with artistic output like that again in my lifetime. on reflection, though. on reflection, by which i mean a series of blog crawls through fanart archives going back over a decade, i may have been somewhat mistaken, and also thirteen years old. it turns out that to an untrained eye all fanart is equally incredible; there are pieces i remember as masterpieces that i now view (fondly!) as... kinda bad. this isn't a flex, it's just weird to realize that i surpassed 90% of my 13 year old art idols back in college. even as the eye improves, memory preserves amateur yaoi as comparable to an enlightenment masterpiece. then again, my memory sucks.* modern trigun fandom's output is probably more artistically on par with what i remember homestuck being, and even then not quite there.

due to tumblr's salted earth policy towards tits i can't say how much of the pervert aspect of homestuck fandom was true to my teenage recollection, but what scraps remain aren't super far off. based on limited records it SEEMS to have been both hornier and at once less (broad gesture towards the western slash hentai flavor of nonconsent)(a different beast entirely than yaoi nonconsent trust me there are different artistic movements at play here, influencing one another asymmetrically) than i remember. the layers of secondhand midwestern christianity continue to peel. i wouldn't describe my teenage self as being scared of sex/averse to internet porn as a rule, and yet interpreting what seems to have been a generally sex-positive fanart as notably debauched has a distinctive aroma of that mild psychosis. while the, uh, choices in ships were, hm, certainly more varied (the coward's description), the particulars of the fanart were fairly in line with modern fandom ship content (note: on several blogs, even what's been wiped retains hints in the tags applied to what are now blank images) (additional note: the author is considering the output of twitter fujoshis as constituting a broader slice of 'modern fandom ship content' than may be accurate).

whump, like actual no bullshit whump, is what i most notice as present in past fandom, now extinct beyond its most watered-down subtypes. think diary comics about depression. trigun volume 10 and the fanart it's spawned hurt, yeah, but that's a tragedy. that's a narrative. maybe (MAYBE) it's a positive indicator for the health of the larger organism that i don't see fanart of anime boy self-harm anymore. but i doubt it. i think gore fanartists still exist, in theory? gore as a focus is to me a different category than fanart with gore as an artistic inclusion. guts mean different things spilling out of what is essentially a blank canvas than they do when they belong to, i dunno, that pink bitch from jujutsu kaisen. what the fuck was his name. jujutsu kaisen is one of several recent shounen serializations that reflect a trend towards more overt gore/body horror/aesthetic grimdarkness in the mainstream, occurring parallel to the broader fandom retreat from similar visceral pain (and blood and guts and all that). i'm off topic. gore is itself different from whump, and you can still find gore if you look for it. gore is about flesh (as metaphor, but flesh regardless), whump is about suffering. there is frequently no metaphor to be had, or what is there is diaphanous and possibly accidental. i've seen several posts to the effect of 'we've lost weird sex in fandom' but i've seen what people do to vash's pussy on twitter. i think we've lost something else entirely. the weird sex remains, however cloistered by the architecture of a failing website inherently hostile to search and archival functions. the naked edginess (rawness? (is this a joke about flesh)) of whump is, for better or worse, not really a current part of the fandom ecosystem. i cannot remember the last time i saw an anime boy cut himself.

and again, maybe that's a good thing, but again, i doubt it. shockingly, i would not describe the broader internet populace as 'more mentally and emotionally healthy than 2014'. the word i would use is probably 'worse'. just worse. just like so much worse that any attempt at a similarly overlong retrospective on that sea change would be eligible for a hugo nomination by wordcount. discourse around the state of the very online public's comfort with discomfort focuses primarily on depictions of sexuality (for what i think are valid reasons, see blood knife's epochal 'everyone is beautiful and no one is horny') and, yes, that is often a proxy for other, parallel critiques, but, but, but. but is that the only place where boundaries on acceptable expression have narrowed? or just the one with enough intracommunity disagreement to be notable? there was for a period of time a lot of talk about hostility towards 'ugly' mental illness, the ways it often manifests not as easily-digested inaction but as violence, self-inflicted, omnidirectional, destructive. i don't really see that talk anymore. the parameters of what is acceptable in depictions of mental illness have been quietly agreed on. ask yourself, 'could you put this in a buzzfeed listicle?' and there you go.

returning to modern trigun fandom as a counterexample to heyday homestuck trends, i think of the way vash's near explicit suicidal depression (manifested as alcoholism, avoidance, a tendency to self-sabotage, a general late-series vibe of being unsafe to bring near a bridge) is generally ignored, or alluded to only in contexts where his yaoi wife can kiss it all better. the combination of suicidal depression and physical mutilation leads in a straight line to a door with nothing behind it, a vacuum left unfilled. i think of being 15 and scrolling past an mspaint comic about the minutiae of dave strider's abusive home life, at the time only implicitly canon, through a reading that much of the fandom still rejected as ooc. a picture of bro holding dave as a child, blood on the frame. bruises. straight red lines on #FFFFFF. let me remind the homestuck newcomer that this guy wasn't an explicit abuse victim in 2014. these agonies were whole-cloth inventions. do we still do that? we still invent new shapes for alien dicks (the trigun/homestuck comparison serves me again) and apply questionable interpretations of bdsm dynamics to whatever m/m is in fashion.

zooming out from my adolescent focus on dave fanart (yeah yeah i know i know he was everyone's favorite whaddya want), i wonder if commercialization plays a role, because it always does. that question is never answered in the negative. you weren't allowed to sell homestuck merch at cons. no one was making money off homestuck fandom. is that why it was like that? i don't know. i have laundry that i should be doing.

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Explains Bone - Part 1

(These posts will be collected under the tag KyidylBones because I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy.  Also, I’m going to start cross-posting them to my science side blog @science-of-anthropology​ in an effort to like give people a place to go if they’re just here for these posts and not for my other random thoughts.  That blog also contains a lot of decent info from the days I was premed and taking premed physical science classes.)

Intro and Ethical Considerations

Ok, all you weird nerds out there (<3), how’s your day going? Good? Are you ready to hear me ramble about one of my favorite things on earth? Well, then gather ‘round ye old tumblr fire.  We’re gonna learn about *people*! Because all the stuff I taught you before was stuff you basically learn in anthropology undergrad and in a field school.  But! I *specialized*.  I have secret powe--*coughs* I mean, a special interest.  See, my favorite topic in the whole world, the one on which I will ADHD infodump for DAYS about if you let me, is the intersection of human evolution and culture.  My ultimate goal is either to work in a museum, or be a scientist that studies this.  That’s why I went out and got a masters.  

A bioarchaeology masters not only taught me how to dig up people, but a whole HOST of other things related to people and digging (Like genetics and using drones to survey an area for digging.). But before we can get into the details, there’s a few things you have to understand.  First: 

On sex, race, ethnicity, and gender

Anthropologists of all kinds are well, WELL aware that these 4 things are extremely fraught and extremely complicated.  Probably more aware than any of the other sciences.  But, when you learn to identify skeletons you learn to do it based on sex and race for a couple reasons: 

1. When identifying a body for the police department, their databases are entirely based on these identifying characteristics.  A lot of forensic anthropologists work with the police to identify remains.  If we can’t pick out demographic qualities then we’d never match them up to people in the missing persons database who are listed along a sex binary and racial categories.  But believe me when I tell you we all do it under duress and in annoyance because we know how complicated these things are for people.  

2. When dealing with populations that are gone and can’t tell us what they identified as, we arrange them by sex and race to make some sort of sense of the demographics of an area.  This is how we know, for example, that people from Africa intermingled early and often with people from Europe.  Being able to ID these markers on a skeleton is faster and cheaper than DNA tests and often the only method available, especially in prehistoric populations. 

So I will be discussing features on bones in these terms, but understand that it’s not my way of excluding trans people.  We, as of yet, just have no good way of *identifying* trans people in the archaeological record. 

And second:

Ethics

Ethics is a huge and thorny topic so I’m going to only make a couple notes here.  I bounced this series around in my head for awhile and the reason I didn’t do it sooner is that despite having human remains in my possession for legitimate scientific reasons, it’s extremely unethical for me to post pictures of them on the open internet.  The same goes for the tons of pictures I have of human remains from my masters studies.  To that ends, the images I’ll be using will fall into one of four categories: images from my textbooks, images on the public web that are available for educational use, and images of Bone Clones, and my own image of damage patterns on animal bones.  This is also a warning that, yes, there will be images of human remains here.  I’ve decided, though, that when a post starts to contain human remains, I’ll insert a cut.  So you will not be surprised by human remains randomly in your timeline.  

Now, here are some ethical things I need you guys to understand and adhere to: 

- These people had names in life, and you do not get to give them new ones.  Naming a skeleton is verbotten in archaeology circles, and often will extend to Bone Clones because they are casts of real bones. The correct terminology here is either “the/this individual” or “the remains”. If specificity is needed they’re either given an identification number or referred to by their demographic information.  If you have the name of the individual bc there was a gravestone or records, then it’s ok to use it.  Often we don’t though for privacy reasons.  

- These were people.  They had tastes, beliefs, people who loved them, etc. - all of which were different than mine or yours.  Please keep that in mind when commenting.  

- There is no ethical way for a lay person to obtain human remains, aside from direct donation by a relative or friend.  No, I don’t care what they website says in their statement about ethical sourcing.  They did NOT obtain the remains ethically.  The people who sold the remains almost always do so under duress, usually economic.  And if they weren’t given, they were stolen.  There is No.  Ethical.  Way.  To.  Purchase.  Human.  Bone.

- Modern bone collections obtained by institutions for education usually are obtained ethically.  Often via donation by a living donor before their death for the purpose of scientific education.  In other instances they are obtained from legally-dug excavations, from donation by family members (IE, no money exchanged and consent given.), or with some other kind of permission.  However, there are many existing bone collections that pre-date this practice and are NOT obtained ethically.  In the US these are undergoing identification (we’ll get to this in another post) and repatriation, but this is just one of the many thorny issues that physical anthropologists and archaeologists have to be aware of.  

- What other societies do with their human remains is going to seem strange and sometimes disgusting or objectionable to you.  Not always, but definitely sometimes.  This is their choice and in this house we respect the emic (within the social group) view on death rituals.  

I think that’s everything...if I remember more I’ll sprinkle them in as I go along.  Ethical violations are a Big Deal among archaeologists and other social scientists who handle human remains.  It’s one of the few things we don’t joke about (because as we all know, archaeologists are forces of chaos.).  The history of completely unethical treatment in the field makes us very sensitive to how human remains are handled and where they came from.  Questions are 100% fine - you all are still learning and I’m not gonna get mad at you for not knowing yet.  I’ll gently let you know if it’s inappropriate.  

So here’s the stuff I’m planning on getting to: 

Human vs. Animal

Sex identification.  

Racial identification.  

Age identification. 

Teeth! 

Damage to the skeleton (this might be two posts.).  

Other random stuff that might come up while I’m doing the other things.  

So....let’s begin....mwahahahahahahahaha. And for making it to the bottom of this post you get a bonus picture of me AND the dog:

His name is Gage, and my name is Kristina - you’re welcome to use it.  I know probably “Kyidyl” isn’t easy to say in your heads.  :) It’s pronounced kai-dul if you were every wondering tho.  Now you can put a face to the internet voice. :) 

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

I may be getting back on my Raven bullshit. But maybe not because it's, believe it or not, tangential to where my mind is right now.

Long story short, I'm thinking about Dove Going to Therapy (let's be real. the girl Needs it) and trying to figure out who that therapist is that sees the mystics/etc. in canonical DC comics and browsing my "panels" tag because I SWEAR I reblogged it... except I keep getting distracted because that tag has a Lot of good panels in it.

Has lots of Raven, of course. Because it's my blog, why wouldn't it?

Longer version: I know in the last chapter of DDD (it's mostly written, just not Polished yet), Dove has this moment where she's like "I deserve how much this hurts, I don't deserve to be here with you guys, and I'm dangerous, so you need to send me away!" To which Robin basically replies, "This is the best place for you right now, and psych wards aren't qualified to handle demi-demons."

And, I mean. All the rest of DDD happens. Dove Desperately Needs Therapy. (I don't say that to disparage her; I say that out of compassion, because getting the right therapy does help you heal and move on from things and learn how to cope with trauma/anxiety/etc.)

Between the time of writing that scene (I think it was written when I was 19ish?) and now, I found out that there IS a psychologist (psychiatrist?) in DC (or maybe it was Vertigo?) canon comics that the pages show treating Zatanna. So like. Homo magi, massive amounts of power, danger and daring adventures, if someone could treat Zatanna, surely that someone could handle Dove? And the treatment room seems to be magical; maybe it could handle Dove's powers getting loose if the conversations turns Too Emotional?

I'm trying to figure out How That Works when she's an illegal immigrant with no social security number, and thus no health insurance, and also part demon and the other part is a mystical race that doesn't exist anymore? I'm definitely thinking too hard about the logistics here. But I want to figure out Who That Therapist Was so I can research if she's something I can add to Dove's canon.

As I mentioned on Dove's blog when I was headcanoning whether Dove would get Sieara certified as an Emotional Support Animal: I know that as a teenager, Dove wouldn't be comfortable at ALL talking to a stranger about her Problems^tm. If they tried to send her then, she'd just clam up and withdraw the whole time, and eventually fall silent and just be able to nod or shake her head. It wouldn't be productive at all. (Hence the final decision that even though Sieara functions as one, she wouldn't get the Official Letter. She'd never need it, anyways.)

But as an adult, I could see her being able to open up to someone eventually. It would certainly take a few sessions to build trust before they get into the Deep Down Stuff, but like. I think it usually does to get to the heart of the matters, let alone the Healing Parts. Maybe Srentha would go with her? Be in the room with her and everything? At least for the first few months. I imagine Raven might be willing, but would probably have to leave because of All the Emotions in that place. (Therapy can get... intense.)

But even though Srentha gets a job (temporarily) in adulthood, he and Dove don't exactly have secret identities. It would HAVE to be someone who can treat the hero population. With the extreme levels of dangers and emotions and the sheer mystical WEIRDNESS in Dove's life... and also, it would have to be someone she can talk to about her father being a demon and All the Issues that Come With That. And losing Azarath. Her mother's spells. Just, weird shit that a normal therapist probably doesn't know how to approach.

(Hell, none of my therapists have known how to approach my emet*phobia or dyscalculia. I've had to figure those out for myself. I can't imagine they'd have any idea how to tackle magic powers.)

....I can't seem to find the pages with Zatanna in therapy, actually, and now I'm doubting I've even reblogged them.

[kaylorfails]

Yes, Karlies Kloss is married.

I normally don’t do debunks but the outright lies being spread and about about Karlie Kloss’s marraige to Josh Kushner are annoying, so here we go.

On July 24 2018, People announces that Karlie and Josh got engaged X . This wasn’t a surprise to those of us not kaylors, it was quite obvious, but before the announcement all was well in kaylorland on July 23rd:

This surprised and angered a lot of kaylors whose reactions went from “they’re stigmatising lesbianism” (X), “this is horrible news” (X), “she’s going to jail” (X), “they’ll never get married” (X) (X). “it’s part of the fucking story” (X), “giving you the truth is not my call to make” (X), to “publicity stunt” (X) 

While kaylors were bemoaning her lack of ring, Karlie showed it off (X), posted insta stories about her friends and family reacting to the news just to rub it in further (X). Congrats from the sisters-in-law (X) (X), parents-in-law (X), Toni Garrn (X).

That was just the antipasto, now onto the main dish. I’ll be using “you” in this. This is a debunk directed at kaylors, so never mind that.

On Otcober 18 2018, Karlie Kloss got married to Josh Kushner and prior to that, she made a spotify playlist with her wedding date.

“She isn’t Jewish and didn’t converted” She is and she did. Apart from the fact that a British Vogue video in 2015 showed “meeting a Rabbi” in her notebook, shes’s spoken about it in Vogue in 2018, on WWHL, and recently with Naomi Campbell. Her conversion has also been discussed on various Jewish publications (X) (X). Any further insistence she didn’t convert is antisemitic. There’s only so much ignorance can excuse.

“A thursday wedding is weird” It would be if they were WASP or Catholic. Even then, I’d still call it unusual at best. But they’re Orthodox Jews. Shabbat, a weekly 25-hour observance from just before sundown each Friday through the completion of nightfall on Saturday, would make the usual saturday wedding not possible. For a Jewish couple, thursday is a good day to get married. I could understand thinking thursday is a weird day if you’re not Jewish, but insisting it is after being informed about it, is offensive.

For your information, ttb, a blog run a white, straight, definitely not Jewish woman and followed by many non jewish kaylors, is telling you about Judaism.

I don’t get the “photoshoot” argument. The kaylor fandom is literally build on a Vogue photoshoot actually used for promo (X). It was also a blatant ripoff of Poppy Delevigne and Alexa Chung’s bestfriend shoot (X) (X).

“The wedding was a photoshoot” You know those beautiful wedding pictures you might have seen on facebook or instagram? They were taken by professional photographers. Not by a ghost or potatoes, professional photographers. Yes, you can gasp.

And they are hired to do their job and do it beautifully. I don’t know what kaylors real life wedding experiences are, but there’s this thing called pre-wedding shoots people like doing at their weddings. Yes, it’s a weird world we live in. These pictures end up in a strange thing called wedding book, which will be shown to friends and family, future babies and grandbabies, and unsuspecting guests. Or burned if the marriage ends in a divorce.

Professional videographers are also hired to film the whole thing. From the bride waking up, to her getting her makeup done, her friends being silly, to her leaving her wedding reception. The world is wild.

On the wedding day, the pictures were posted on Hongbo Li’s instagram:

A friend of hers demanded it to be taken down (Karlie follows this friend on IG):

Who is HongBo Li? A comment on a ttb post gave us the answer:

And he’s also mentioned in this Vogue writeup about haute couture. As you can see, he isn’t some random kaylor voraciously living through strangers. he’s actually worked on various celebrities wedding dresses. Karlie didn’t put on a local store wedding dress, she actually had one Dior designed for her. That lucky bitch! I mean oppressed lucky bitch!

Onto the photographer. Her wedding pictures were taken by Heather Hazzan, A NY based photographer and very good and successful at her job:

Again, Karlie didn’t get a random photographer for her wedding, she got the best.The only thing this is proving is that being rich and famous gets you access. And not ony is she rich, she also married an obscenely rich man. The picture of the oppressed.

“There was nothing showing a wedding was going on” Now, that’s a lie. Should Karlie have released a full movie showing every detail? For why? You’d still call her wedding fake:

JK robes and hotdog stands (The guy is Kristine’s boyfriend):

More (X) Go through this tag you lazy bags! I’m tired.

Karlie getting prepared for her wedding (X) (X) (X). An expression you might have while your sister is being forced to fake a wedding:

“None of her friends were there” While I’m sure there’ve been many guestless weddings and they’re just as valid as the populated ones, this doesn’t seem to be one of those.

A childhood friend who didn’t get the memo about this being a stunt:

Toni Garrn, a kaylors appointed ex gf, posted this a whole year after the wedding:

David Geffen showing you’ve been sold a bridge about this being fake:

Ashley Graham speaking about being a guest at the wedding.

“She doesn’t look happy” Uhm, if you say so. Here’s Karlie being an unhappy and miserable being on her wedding day and here she looks devastedly sad looking at her wedding dress.

“There was no wedding reception” As Katy Perry would: “Time, the ultimate truth teller” Here’s the video Karlie posted on her 2nd anniversary showing there was indeed a wedding reception.

A pre-wedded Karlie with Josh and his parents.

Everything pointed to this being a real wedding and not a woods photoshoot you’ve been told it is. I’ve yet to see the magazine spread this shoot was supposedly made for and It’s been 2 years already.

So yeah, Karlie Kloss is married. She’s married and pregnant. Move the fuck on.

If you’re sure of your stuff, come to me with something that isn’t a version of this:

If you’re a kaylor trying to get out of the cult, go through this Joshlie timeline to purify your soul.

But if you’re a firm believer that Karlie is pregnant with Austin Swift’s sperm and she’ll raise the baby with Taylor Swift, there’s no hope for you and you’re disgusting.

That’s it for the October wedding!

[nexyra]

Okay so This is just a way to let out some frustration so I can put it out there and stop mulling on it bc I'm bad at this sort of stuff - Feel free to ignore it

I'm putting this under Read More; if your fav past-time is to call anyone who likes Ironwood's character or was disappointed by his V8 turn to villainy a stupid bootlicker who "should have seen the signs he was always a tyrant !!" please don't interact with this post. You're ultimately free to think what you want but honestly I see enough of that in the main tag when left alone, I don't need it on my blog it doesn't make me feel good.

Anyone else... well you can read if you're interested but you don't have to either. Feel free to respectfully disagree though, I'm not that bullheaded that I can't partake in a friendly argument =) I'll just be listing some things about Ironwood's reading by the FNDM who get old or draining as someone who doesn't like the V8-characterization they went with

Can people please stop just... copy/pasting real world issues on a world/characters that have nothing to do with them or a completely different context ?

Like,, I genuinely try to educate myself on real-world issues. I know I'm rather privileged so I try to listen and hear out people who speak out about the issues they live through day by day. I know why the "ACAB" moniker exists. I understand the problem that lies within the american police system (and likely other countries as well). I see why the army, on our blue planet, is criticized & its many failings. Etc, the list can go on...

But I'm sorry to say, Remnant isn't OUR Earth. Their Army's primary job is to fight actual evil soulless monsters, not people. The Ace Opps or Huntsmen are not an organization directly inherited from slave-hunting groups. James Ironwood isn't the US army general bombing Middle East. Clover Ebi isn't the racist cop you want in prison. So WHY are they treated as such by so many people ? Stories are not a 1-1 where you can take everything you know and just apply it to a completely different world.

Has Atlas been presented as a country that suffers from racism & classism ? Certainly. Has it be shown this way ? That's already more debatable since the only racist arguments we got were in Mantle (which is the city we're supposed to be rooting for so that's a weird choice but eh it's whatever). Are the characters, as persons, shown to evoke these issues in a way that deserve our scorn ? Not really.

Is Ironwood depicted as particularly racist for example ? I wouldn't say so seeing as one (or more considering Tortuga) of his Ace-Opps are Faunus & it seems perfectly accepted; and he hates Jacques Schnee's guts. So why does he get to shoulder all of our real-world issues as if he was responsible for them, in a context where (pre V8) his army had most likely never killed anything else than Grimm and was shown to elicit very positive reactions from most of the population (V3) ? (In direct contrast to the polarization that the US army might evoke for example.)

You can totally hate Ironwood because of the feelings he evoke, the trope he stems from or the parallels to be made. That doesn't mean however, that he IS truly guilty of every one of OUR world issues (pre-V8)

Just because classism is prevalent in Atlas society does not make Ironwood the figurehead & leader of this issue.

Is classism an issue in Atlas ? Yes. That's been made clear because of Mantle's state as well as Jacques Schnee entire existence & even Cinder's backstory. Does that mean every single one of Ironwood's decisions reeks of classism ? NO

Trust me, as someone who found Ironwood's V8 characterization not... well-executed & too much; there's nothing more annoying than being assaulted by posts about his fall going "it was so obvious !! look at -" only for them to then list reasons in a really biased way or even headcannons based on (again) irl problems. An exemple...

Reasons his turn was good that I see thrown around : "Ironwood left Mantle behind because he only wanted to save the rich. He's a selfish coward & an asshole !"

What we were actually given : "Ironwood suffers from PTSD, and faced with Salem's imminent arrival, he tried to save what he was CERTAIN to be able to protect aka the flying city and all the people on it including Mantle evacuees. There is absolutely no text backing the idea that he wanted to leave with Atlas because it's rich. We could even suppose that he would have left with the 'poor' Mantle if it was the flying city and rich people were hanging safely on the ground. There is indeed an issue with Atlas & Mantle disparity, but Ironwood isn't directly responsible for it."

Does that make his decision to leave Mantle behind a morally right one ? That's of course NOT what I'm saying. The situation is still very ambiguous. But the classism theme has NO place here.

"Ironwood leads Atlas & Mantle. As such, he inherently holds responsability for the issues plaguing it." THIS is an acceptable reading according to me. I would probably argue that even if Ironwood's the only Atlas leader we're shown; he actually only oversees the military & academy (where we haven't ever seen classism issues), so putting Atlas' classism issues on him still doesn't sound fair to me. However the idea & argument is sound.

Acknowledging only how his actions look/the tyrannical surface reading and not the reasonnable justifications or glimpses we were given (pre-V7) of Ironwood being more than his trope

I'll probably stop after this one, but the last thing that is both tiring & annoying after too much of it; is seeing people boil down all of Ironwood's character to the most basic summary, inherently written to paint him in a bad line. And then saying that everything led up to his downfall by using these watered-down versions of the show's events to justify it. Or worse (imo), saying that people who are not satisfied with his V8 characterization that THEY don't understand how good a character he is and don't really appreciate him.... All the while only ever highlighting his characters flaws. Please stop this.

"Ironwood brought an army to the peace Olympics why are you surprised he turned out this way ?" ==> Ironwood brought an army to a country where the civilians visibly have no issue with said-army, to protect a peaceful event that he KNOWS to be targeted by foes. It's definitely overzealous & his conviction that threats should be dealt with by blunt force IS one of his flaws; but pretending that he did it for fun or because he's a tyran is just as misplaced.

"Ironwood said he'd shoot Qrow if he were one of his men why are you surprised he shot Oscar ?" ==> Do I really need to flip through every joke in this show and consider it as absolute truth & proof that the character would enact these words if given the occasion; even when we're shown with certainty that they actually don't mean it ? (IW hugging Qrow to welcome him, refusing to attack Qrow when he's certain Qrow IS attacking him...)

"Ironwood has his military all over Mantle, there's a curfew, all of this is tyrannical why are you surprised he's also down for genocide" ==> Damn, it sure is criminal to have Mantle defended from the litteral monsters roaming inside & out, and to make sure with a curfew that the people are not at risk during the night. I wonder if any recent events could make us reconsider our stance on how evil a enforced curfew is. Mhmmm maybe a pandemic ? Nah I must be imagining things. For real though, at what point did Tyrian's framing/lies (IW has his soldiers all over Mantle because of politics/he's a tyran who refuses opposition) became the truth of the situation for the FDNM too ? Again Mantle's situations SUCK, and that's a problem in itself. Making up problematic reasoning for the situation is dishonest though.

To end this, I'll just make clear. I do not condone any of Ironwood's actions post-V7. I don't think he had to be the big hero of the Atlas arc. Nor that he was without faults. I merely think that he'd have been a better antagonist than villain. And that it'd have been nice to keep the ambiguity/morally greyness that surrounds him; the knowledge that he's TRYING hard to do what's best for everyone; that he has good intentions. That he cares about individuals too to a lesser degree, and that he had people who cared about him as a person.

For short... Ironwood as an antagonist with understandable issues, flaws & failures; making questionable choices but with good intentions ? Hell yeah. Ironwood as a villain, more irredeemable than Hazel, willing to kill people for NO reason or even wipe out a city ? I'm not convinced.

[lambourngb]

re: your tags on that one post abt plotholes in rnm: what are the plotholes that make you lose the most sleep?

(this is my main btw, my rnm blog is @curlyguerin )

Hi! Okay... strap in, because there are a lot of little and big things that wiggle into my thoughts and makes me wonder ...am I the only one who couldn't follow that plotline?

In my opinion RNM suffers more from abandoned narratives and continuity errors than plot holes I guess, since we only have 2 seasons, with at least 2 more to go I guess I can hope they come back to these issues... but: [Under the cut plus some spoilers for season 3]

Things I would like explained :

1. What did Jesse Manes fund with family money in 1x08 ? I'm guessing it was surveillance of the town and the search for more aliens that could have escaped the military in 1947-1948. The idea that Jesse funded Caulfield is just laughable to me, along with how he was able to get his Army-assigned son moved from Germany to New Mexico for 5 years and no one noticed?? Caulfield has to be separate from whatever Jesse was doing in Roswell. Clearly there is still an ACTIVE military project focused on aliens because Flint isn't AWOL, Flint also takes Noah's body to Area 51, so where was Jesse in violation of his orders (Alex's threat to Jesse in 1x08 and then shipping him to Niger)? Surveilling citizens and setting up cameras all over town?

2. Did they ever build an Air Force base on the Fosters Homestead Ranch? (1x01-1x02) ...then it's never mentioned again.

3. I am aware I am the only one who cares about this little bit, but the show seemed to set up a narrative in season 1 about the spotlight Roswell shined white victims of crimes - like Katie and Jasmine, that the town of Roswell holds quite a lot of racism regarding justice- vilifying Rosa for over 10 years, ignoring the deaths of people around Ranchero Night, and then Noah kills Wyatt Long's best friend Hank Gibbons in 1x13. I dunno, I was expecting more from Wyatt in season 2 about this than picking a fight with Michael over Mimi's missing persons sheet and showing up with a crossbow in 2x04. And like, there was a theme of people going missing in season 2!! Mimi, Jenna, the weird twins from 2x06, Charlie -- but yet, no closer scrutiny by Sheriff Valenti other than her focus on Max Evans and the story about Mexico- Like this felt not like a plot hole, but a dropped narrative -- to wrap up the fate of Racist Hank in a missing persons sheet in 2x01. To treat him weirdly like all of Noah's other victims (who were women and men of color and poor), but for a few factors like he was white, he had actual lines in the show over a couple of episodes, and he's one of the few townspeople we learn his first and last name still sticks out in my mind as strange. The Doylist explanation is the actor wasn't available for season 2, but the Watson-perspective of this is just someone the in-show universe doesn't care about ...? Okay. I will keep that in mind, and try to ignore the fact that the town of Roswell swings wildly back to caring about white victims again in 2x13 with Jesse Manes.

4. The Alighting from 1x13 - just how far away was it from happening? Noah was ready to stick a sheriff's deputy, the town event planner and Michael (who probably would be been the only one to go missing without much fanfare, except maybe by Alex) into a pod...for how long? Months? Years? What was his endgame? how did he expect to go unnoticed by the town while he waited for his alien salvation/alien UBER to arrive? Could he just mindwarp everyone into forgetting about the pod squad? Since we didn't see any alien ships show up in the six months from 1x13 to 2x13, and no further follow up by any of our heroes about what Noah was babbling about... I'm going to say this should come back into play for season 3, otherwise it's the most egregious plot hole from season 1.

5. Why did Flint want to work with Helena? Jesse had this master plan that Helena knew all about apparently but she never shares the plan with Flint? Jesse never shares this plan with Flint either? Why? As far as I can tell from the plot of season 2, Jesse takes the console piece from Alex, he was going to kill Alex to keep him out of the way, use the console to blow up civilians, he created a paper trail that pointed the finger at Max, and then when everyone knew the truth about aliens, he was going to use HIS atomizer bomb to release the toxin that Charlie had already developed for Project Shepherd to kill all the aliens.... WHY would Flint want to stop that, especially since they fight in 2x11 over how slow Jesse was moving in his plans? Other than objecting to killing Alex, why would Flint turn Alex over to Helena to blackmail Michael into building a second atomizer bomb? He should have just kept Alex out of the way until it was all over and let Jesse proceed with his plans. Flint's desire to work with Helena Ortecho remains a plot hole to me, that is explained in the most flimsy way of he thinks his dad isn't serious about killing all the aliens even though he has the means? And if he takes Alex from Jesse's control so easily, why not steal the bomb Jesse had too?

6. These are more gripes about continuity, not really plot holes, but the fact we have this loose timeline of events but it doesn't match the weather of filming.... Like Heather Hemmens looked so gorgeous in that little silk outfit in 2x01, but she's wandering outside in Dec in Roswell New Mexico looking like that. I get that it was filmed in August/Sept of 2019 but come on... so my main frustration is I have no idea what season and month is supposed to be on screen. Universe timeline says Winter but filming schedule meant it was early fall with still having the heat of summer there...then the show ends in May/June in the universe, but we all know RNM wrapped in Dec 2019/Jan 2020 so they are all bundled up in winter again.

7. Also on continuity, small things like Rosa's birthday being wrong, the fact her astrological sign isn't Pieces for either date, openly letting Greg Manes see Rosa, not seeming to care that Liz's ex-fiance hears that Rosa is alive - like i'm sure her "dead" sister came up in conversation between Liz/Diego

- the show gives us this beautiful conversation with Michael sharing his background with Alex in 1x10, but then Alex completely forgets it in 2x04 by dropping some line like "this is what you do with family" when Michael expresses confusion about a height chart. Also, on the same note- the jabs about the Library being a dive bar, also felt like a drop in continuity because Alex knows that Michael just lost his mom (1x12) , the government IS studying aliens, and his brother is in a pod, so like, he has some very valid reasons to drink if that's what he wanted to do with in his life in early season 2!! but, also he knows Michael is a genius??

- Why Alex never mentions Rosa, Isobel's blackouts/why Michael gave up UNM, or even hint about what happened with his dad in the shed during his conversation with Maria in 2x05 is also beyond bizarre to me. It was an "information" dump conversation that Alex still doesn't share all the information he has about a situation and just ends up looking kind of judgmental in my opinion.

- the truck conversation in 2x06 between Maria and Alex, why Maria prompts a girl's name when Alex says he's never been in a real relationship INSTEAD of addressing the very real elephant in the room, Michael Guerin, that they had a conversation about in 2x05- also feels like a gap in continuity.

8. Science wise- the pathogen that Charlie developed? It was supposed to be so specific that it could kill a leader of Al Quada and all of their direct descendants but leave the rest of the population unharmed. [Which um, that's a war crime, but whatever!] How was Maria affected? the DNA they had at Caulfield to develop it - like, Maria was descended from Louise and Louise lived free. The only person that pathogen SHOULD have affected was Michael (if they used Nora to base it on) Unless you're telling me that there's some protein in "alien dna" that is so specific to aliens, that no other human shares it, but also so completely undetectable that Kyle couldn't find it in Maria's blood... ? I suppose it's possible. I hope we get more explanation about that in season 3. It makes me wonder why Caulfield/Project Shepherd ever let Patty Harris go after she volunteered for some study then, and remained content to just pay her medical bills through a fake insurance company? [But also didn't flag Mimi and all the doctors that Maria took her to???]

9. Michael's hand. I'm going to reserve judgment about this, because some of my salt on this is based on season 3 promo pictures, but I really thought that moment in 2x13 when he takes off his hat, while Alex is singing, you see him without the wrapping on his hand, that maybe he found some peace with Jesse dead and demolishing the shed with Alex. But then it looks like the hand-danna is all over season 3, right up until the finale of season 3, so... was that a mistake in wardrobe AND not a beautiful moment of character growth??? I wish I could extend some grace to RNM about that, but alas... see above for why I have trust issues.

10. Perhaps I wasn't watching season 1 closely, but I thought Noah's madness was brought on by the fact he was stuck in his pod? That it was "lower class travel accommodations" and Isobel's scream at 13 got his attention? I assumed that he stayed in the pod, possessing Isobel on and off, right up until he used her body to kill Rosa in 2008, absorbing enough power to break out. So how did Noah find Jim Valenti so quickly? If it was through Isobel's memories, then why did Jim not immediately have Noah, some random alien approaching him about his recently dead daughter, hauled off to Caulfield? Jim pays $1,000 for Rosa's body, putting her in a pod [Noah's broken pod??] and stores her, waiting for...something? An alien to come along to bring her back. So did Jim know about The Savior? Why would Jim work with Noah and vice versa? Again, I'm hoping we get more about this in season 3.

11. Was there a point of keeping Alex in the Air Force? He arranges a place for them to work on bringing Max back, but I feel like anyone could have done that? Like Isobel had money, she could have rented a storage facility. All of the equipment was borrowed from the hospital, not the military. The information about 1947-1948 was from the drives decoded from Caulfield or the AAR report left by Flint in the Project Shepherd bunker (which again was decommissioned, not an active military installation). I could support the decision if it had provided some richness to the plot or some conflict within the character, neither of which really happened. Alex hacking the government and going undercover in the Air Force to protect Michael is basically fanon. I love that fanon, but alas...

12. Finally, the time jump. What year are we jumping into? 2020? 2021? Why does it make me think none of those questions above will be answered.

[fatfemmearoorc]

this shit is what people mean by "cottagecore is used by terfs to advertise their ideology to vulnerable queers looking to escape while also neo-colonizing real life modern places that people just Live in" and "terfs/radfem your aesthetics with their dog whistles to shimmy their way into your spaces and no amount of no true scotsmanning will magic them away" (with a healthy dollop of cult bullshit).

most everything here Looks fairly innocuous, or at least could pass as neutral if you're not good at seeing terf and radfem dog whistle ("womyn" aside lol).

what's Especially notable, however, and for various reasons, are "pagan homestead", "seperatism", "priestess of avalon", and perhaps most sinister the psuedo-comforting calls to message the op if youre in need of "healing and wisdom."

lets get into the fairly simple things first. the cottagecore-esque "pagan homestead," especially some sort of alaskan isolated terf/radfem compound who knows where and attained who knows how. probably with no mind towards whos land its on, re: the actual native people who still actually fucking Live there to this day. many of us have Heard the issues with and discussions about cottagecore in general, and im not even native, so im just going to link a few articles and sources at the bottom of this post from people with more experience on the subject than me, and put my faith in your ability to make your opinions and critical thoughts.

next, the paganism thing. heres the thing. some of these people will fake your aesthetic to advertise their ideology, using convenient paint to find vulnerable queers and women.

but more dangerously some of them just genuine believe. something we forget is that terfs and radfems arent cartoon villians, theyre very real people. and i dont say this to, like, give them Room or some sort of appeal to emotion, but because when we stop thinking of them as people, then we stop understanding their actions as the actions a person makes. we stop understanding their motives, we stop recognizing that their actions are decisions, human error, human malice. we start thinking of them as Those Things Over There that occasionally say Really Weird Shit thats Super Funny in its absurdity. UNTIL you take more than a five second look and you realize they often arent saying a word salad, but a vile cocktail of transmisogyny and self isolating group specific slang designed to make Her feel like shes in the In Group and you feel like the Out Group (which is a red flag for cult bullshit)

its important to recognize that people with Your passions, Your favorite songs, Your opinions on your favorite show, are terfs. they are people. they eat the same food you do, they like the same sodas. we arent not a different species. the difference between a terf and you is simply a Whole lot of respectibility politics aimed at the most vulnerable population they can muster sustainable hate for. they Are in your communities and they Will leverage your shared passions hide their hate behind you. they'll feel perfectly justified about it, too.

finally, what i find most personally alarming perhaps, is that homestead tag and "intentional community" and "seperationist community" in conjunction witht those very first tags. "if you feel called to hold space for healing and wisdom, reach out to us and lets talk."

listen. ladies. any radfems or terfs out there reading this just because its reached yall's circles or because some of you happen to have incognito blogs or just anyone who the post in the screenshot even Slightly appeals to. i cannot stress how MONUMENTALLY horrible a bad idea it would be to take this person up on their offer. this is primo classic cmpound cult bullshit red Flags. no matter how unlikely it seems the op will actually get the money or whatever to actually do what shes talking about, i really cannot stress how Bad and Awful an idea it is to connect with people like this, emotionally or physically. i know that people like this (ideology aside) seem nice and compassionate, and maybe they even are, on certain levels. but people who want to isolate you spiritually, socially, and physically. this person wants to take you and your money to some isolated compound in the wilderness of alaska, and in the meantime just has an Open call to spiritual counseling on their blog based on that goal. these are huge red flags.

these people are Not mean when you meet them. they are not Rude, they will Not abuse you in their Cult Bullshit Pitch. theyre not going to have the Cult robes on and they probably wont ask you to fuck the devil or anything. they will use your passions, your fears, your needs. they will seem accepting, they will seem like theyve known you your whole life, and they will seem like the only ones who understand you.

anyway long story short, this person is an embryonic cult member/leader, this is how people use your interests to get to You, and this is specifically how terfs and radfems use cottagecore and modern colonialist farm fantasies.

links:

- https://www.hercampus.com/school/vcu/cottagecore-aesthetic-racist

- https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/black-women-cottagecore-whiteness

- https://witchwithme.com/2020/08/28/cottagecore-a-gateway-to-romanticizing-settler-colonialism/

[gatherthesuspectspod]

A hundred ways to die in Wales

Hello Tumblr!

My first post ever here! I’m still learning the ropes, so please be kind!

This might be awfully presumptuous of me, but you may recognise the name from a few years back. Before all of this happened, I worked for BBC Radio 4 as their Welsh correspondent - a bit niche, I grant you, but I did alright on social media. I even had a blue tick on Twitter before it went down for good. 

At its peak, whatever media you worked in, scoops were delivered on social media. No one went to the radio or the newspapers for breaking news. Hell, even the TV news was struggling.  So, even radio journalists like me had to be twitter savvy, you know? 

It does make me wonder how Tumblr survived. As a journalist (well, former journalist) I should probably have done some research and found out…  

 My housemate, Jack, suggested I start to keep this blog so that he, in his exact words, ‘wouldn’t have to listen to me moan about not being a journalist anymore.’ So, here I am, coming to scream into the void that is the last social media platform standing (apart from LinkedIn… Shoulda known that even during the apocalypse, start-up CEO Chad Moneybags would still need to post motivational bullshit about 5 am starts and tagging every post with ‘#crushingit’)

Anyway, I’ve strayed slightly from the point… So, this blog isn't going to be full of hard-hitting investigative journalism or even those colourful local news stories you used to see about water skiing hamsters. It’s just going to be me, posting my thoughts about how much more screwed the world is than the previous week. 

Cheerful stuff, right? Well, as REM sang, ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine’. And you know what, while fine might be stretching a bit, it could be worse...

Before it happened, when people thought about the end of the world, we always pictured some huge catastrophe. ‘The Hollywood Apocalypse,’ Jack calls it. You know the kind - people screaming in the streets as some unspeakable horror unfolds about them. 

In movies, the end of the world was always sudden, over in a flash,  with pockets of humanity left to pick up the pieces of a shattered world. Except, that’s not how it happened, not that we should be surprised, life rarely imitates the movies. 

In fact, it happened so slowly and contained so many individual strands that by the time it arrived, it took us even more by surprise - even the right-wing newspapers didn’t have time to come up with some ‘pithy’ name for it. I’ve always liked the term ‘tipping point,’ The point at which every one of those strands, however linked or disparate, tipped the scales so far against humanity, there was no turning back. 

I mean, we shouldn’t have been surprised. We had been warned, after all. For years (no, decades, even) scientists talked about how we were destroying the earth. From the changing climate to the destruction of entire ecosystems, all in the name of capitalism. 

People warned us it would lead to societal collapse. It wasn’t hard to see it coming, if you were paying attention. But, even if you were paying attention, the sheer magnitude of it was enough to cause even the strongest advocates some blind spots caused by existential terror. Like a Lovecraftian monster rising from the depths of the ocean, who could wrap their head around the true horror.  

Instead, we played out our little culture wars as the planet died… we elected people to distract and not solve… we lied and allowed ourselves to be lied to. Until, in the end, there were so many that no longer cared about the truth that finding a solution was never a possibility.   

The rise of ignorance led to the rise of populism, which led to the rise of fascism, and eventually isolationism. Each country, widowed and trapped in its own poky bachelor apartment of despair. With nothing but memories of past glories to keep it going while the world around slowly burns.

The thing about this kind of creeping apocalypse, this tipping point, is that there is a certain mundanity in it all. There are millions dead, but there was no Hollywood pre-credit sequence of terrified crowds running through Manhattan. 

This apocalypse had an absence of symbols - actually, no. That’s not quite right. I mean, we don’t have the statue of liberty drowning in sand while hyper-intelligent apes roam the planet, sure. But last week, the sea caught on fire… the fucking sea! You’d think after completely decimating the planet for a hundred years, some companies may have learned a lesson or two - like not setting dire to the fucking sea again!

And just today, the newspapers are full of pictures of yet another ghost town in West Wales slowly sinking into the sea. We have our symbols, alright. They are just smaller, more mundane than the Hollywood apocalypse we always felt we deserved - as a species, we are so arrogant that we feel even our extinction deserves something special, something showy. But, like I said, if you are paying attention, there are symbols to be found everywhere. 

Is our slow, boring apocalypse better than the ostentatious apocalypses of Tinseltown, complete with their big budget explosions and alien invasions? I’m honestly not sure. 

One part of me used to think that at least then it would be over quickly. This was a particularly comforting thought during the war, as English shells rained down on Cardiff. But, even the war fizzled slowly, bubbling away around the fringes, with neither country having the resources, will or money to mount any serious threat to the other. It turned out that not even the newly installed Albion dictatorship in England could get away with a costly hot war, while millions of its citizens starved to death. 

It sounds weird to say, but slowly you adjust to it. You know? Slowly, bit-by-bit, the fucking sea being on fire doesn’t seem such a big deal as it did a year ago. Slowly, bit-by-bit, you stop watching the news. You realise the images of starving children 50 miles away over the border have become the norm. 

You become desensitised to the food queues, the extreme swings in weather, the rapidly shrinking coastline. When was the last time you even saw a bee? It’s all just normal. But in spite of all of that, we still sit here, night after night, staring at our tiny plastic phones, reading the latest #crushingit update from that douchebag Chad, half hoping that there is still time for the aliens to show up and finish the job…

I realise that was quite a long run-on sentence, but it’s been a while. I’m out of practice. Like I said, it’s been three years since I last wrote, well, anything! I don’t know if anyone will even read this… I mean how many people can even access Tumblr anymore? But, Jack was right, it did help to get some stuff out.

Until next time (possibly), stay bored out there!

Kara