#also historical context exists

[rooftopdaigos]

I saw too many borderline ridiculous insanely insensitive takes about real wars from western people. You know, it's about real humans. Maybe stop comparing one conflict to another. It's not a contest

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[my-deer-friend]

This is supposed to be the queer weirdos website and yet the standard of proof on here for whether a historical figure was queer is higher than in most academic contexts.

[rainbowresurrection]

Kinda got a love/hate relationship with the history of K/S because it's like. Can I please have a queer discussion about this 1960s television show without it being reduced to "shipper discourse". I thought Spock and Kirk were homo long before I knew that their characters spawned a fanfiction counterculture. The bisexual dude who wrote the episode that really kick-started the movement didn't know it was going to coalesce into the fan phenomenon that it did, he was just writing what he knew how to write best: the repression of burning male desire, and two dudes doing homoerotic shit. Can I just talk about the repressed burning male desire please, and the implications of a gay angle to Kirk and Spock's story, without it being referred to as shipper discourse. Can I do that. Does this make sense

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[chiropteracupola]

sometimes!! when you are doing academical stuff it opens your brain in directions and then you get THOUGHTS ‼️

[jinxed-sinner]

Alright here's my full (possibly hot) take on redesigning Hazbin Hotel characters and making a video showcasing those redesigns while you criticize the official designs.

First and foremost, you are redesigning someone else's OCs. Hazbin Hotel is, in essence, a passion project for Viv. How she talks about it makes that incredibly clear to me. The only difference between Hazbin Hotel and, for example, the story I'm developing surrounding some of my D&D OCs is that Hazbin Hotel got picked up by a streaming service and is significantly more popular than most passsion projects get.

Personally if someone wanted to redesign my D&D OCs, I wouldn't mind it, in fact I'd probably think it was really cool that someone would want to redesign one of my OCs to be closer to their tastes in terms of what they like to draw. I would, however, be made incredibly uncomfortable if someone made a video redesigning them where they also pointed out everything they thought was wrong with the designs. I didn't design these specific D&D characters to be 1-to-1 accurate to their classes in D&D or to look professionally designed. I designed them how I wanted them to look for the story I'm telling because I don't plan to ever play them in a campaign. The main character Avlan is a paladin, and I can acknowledge that his design might not look exactly like a paladin. One of the tabaxi in the story (Ice) is a bard and the other (Spark) is a ranger, and I acknowledge that their classes might not come across well in their designs. The single tiefling I've designed for this story (Tragedy) is a cleric but might not come off as one in their design. But I specifically designed them to be easy for me to draw because I want to be able to tell this story through my art. Having someone say "oh, Avlan's armor isn't paladin enough!" or "Avlan's fur colors and patterns should be closer to a wild rabbit's because harengon shouldn't be based on domestic rabbit colors!" would fucking hurt (especially because I'm so attached to Avlan, but it would hurt just as much if similar comments were made about Ice, Spark, or Tragedy). I am so passionate about these characters and being told their designs are bad or wrong in some way would be like a stab in the heart, and it would still feel like a stab in the heart if this story ever got a massive fandom behind it. Giving Avlan more complex armor because you think it'd look cool or just want to see what it'd look like? Sure, if I could draw more complex armor I'd give him more complex armor too. Giving him more complex armor but also shitting on the armor I decide to draw him with? My motivation to draw him in his armor, potentially draw him period, would be dead for WEEKS.

Why is it suddenly okay just because someone's passion project was picked up by Amazon Prime? Why is it suddenly okay to be "fixing" someone's character designs just because the project has a much bigger budget than most artists get and is on a popular streaming service? It's not. I don't care if you're a professional character designer, or think a specific character would look better with certain traits, or just don't like the character designs.

Hazbin Hotel is still Vivienne Medrano's passion project, and redesigning her characters and making videos talking about everything you think is "wrong" with them is, honestly, disgusting. You can make videos explaining your choices in your redesigns without putting down the designs that already exist, whether you like them or not. Me thinking Lucifer looks better with his tail not restricted to his full demon form doesn't suddenly mean I don't like his official design, because I fucking love it. If you wouldn't do it to an artist whose passion project is just a webcomic here on Tumblr, don't fucking do it to an artist whose passion project got picked up for a cartoon by a big streaming service (or any company for that matter).

[sukibenders]

I ultimately wish Bridgerton had just scrapped the idea of racism and racial prejudice from their world and just had a world where that, really, wasn't an issue. Like that within itself would have been perfect because, not only, would it allow poc viewers to see themselves in a show without having to explain or justify how they got there (because whenever poc are in historical fantasies all of a sudden we have to face oppression or else it's not accurate 🙄) but also because...the introduction that racism did exist in their world was very...messily added, to say the least.

[arcanecandelabra]

finished she who became the sun. fucking banger. love a historical low fantasy political thriller. i even cared about the men contained within in it because they were fucked up enough. ouyang... wished ma was less of an object for zhu, but i understand why the choice was made. the prose was evocative, especially within regards to characters: "his laugh was like a cut of meat on the butchers slab" god damn! anyway, can't wait to read the sequel

[m-ercutios]

i grew up in an entirely secular household raised by atheists. the extent of my familiarity with biblical canon is first twelve-ish pages (generous estimate) of the bible i got through before getting bored when i was nine, the section of paradise lost i read in sophomore english class, and whatever i’ve picked up through osmosis. i have been baffling people with my lack of cultural context for years.

should i have taken the initiative to do some self study? probably, but the way teachers often reacted to me not knowing what they considered common knowledge in a culturally christian society made me not want to. idk i’m a fundamentally spiteful creature. but up until very recently everything i’ve learned about adam and eve et al has been against my will.

anyway. i’ve been listening to the jewish literacy audiobook and it’s been very enlightening. for example, “canaan” as in canaan house from the locked tomb series is actually a biblical reference and not just an instance of tamsyn muir making up scifi words.

[cultivating-wildflowers]

🎧

[wonder-worker]

"It is difficult to argue that [Edward IV] was wrong in what he did. His advancement of [Richard of Gloucester] can be criticized only by those who believe that the only good nobleman is an impotent nobleman. Medieval kings did not think in these terms. Gloucester’s power was valuable because it ensured royal control of a significant and troublesome part of the country. Nor can Edward be blamed for not foreseeing the ends to which Gloucester might put his power. The duke had been a loyal upholder of the house of York, a central figure in Edward’s polity*; there was no obvious reason why he should not occupy the same role under Edward V. In this respect, precedent was on Edward’s side. Previous minorities had seen squabbles over the distribution of power, but no young king had ever been deposed. Even royal uncles traditionally drew a line at that, something which explains why Gloucester’s actions seemed so shocking to contemporaries and, perhaps, the reason why he got away with it so easily in the short term.

In the immediate sense, Gloucester must take final responsibility for what happened in 1483. However one explains the motives behind his actions, things happened because he chose that they should: there is nothing in the previous reign which compelled him to act as he did."

— Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service

*Richard was also, yk, Edward's own brother who had been entirely loyal to him during his life. The problem wasn’t that Edward trusted Richard (why wouldn't he?), the problem is that Richard broke that trust in a horrible and unprecedented way to usurp a 12-year-old. Please understand the difference.

[thedevotionaltour]

people will hate to heart it but i love 60s matt like so sincerely he's so so so funny. infinitely charming. i like him.

[queerpontmercy]

Hey I am your friendly neighborhood counseling student here to remind you that not only are diagnostic criteria not set in stone (DSM criteria are a shared language for professionals to communicate what they’re noticing), but also -- our understanding of trauma and what is traumatic has been evolving a lot even over the last few years as we talk about things like spiritual trauma, racialized trauma, etc. and it’s going to continue to evolve over time.

PTSD is useful language for a lot of people right now, but it’s a very narrow category of what we are growing to recognize as different types of trauma. For example, PTSD Criterion A is only just now recognizing that it can be vicariously traumatic for people to witness or hear of violent death/serious injury happening to someone else. And this is to say nothing of times our bodies say we’re going to die, even if intellectually and physically we’re fine. That happens a lot more often.

The DSM is fairly good at saying “hey, look at this cluster of symptoms/experiences that happen all together, let’s give them a name and communicate about them.” It’s also good at “legitimizing” those clusters to people, including the broader population. What it’s pretty bad, despite folks’ efforts (definitely not gonna say best efforts lmao) at is recognizing the breadth of human experience. It’s a psychiatric document and parts of it are incredibly  arbitrary- for example, why do you need 5 symptoms for Major Depressive disorder? Why not 3 or 4?

Which is to say, maybe your experiences don’t overlap completely onto the frankly very complicated criteria that designate what we’re calling PTSD. Maybe they do. But our understanding of trauma is not limited to what’s held in a book, so if something feels traumatic, by all means let’s explore that.

I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.

The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.

In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.

"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.

"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.

"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.

"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.

Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.

PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.

[theophages]

you ever read certain people's takes on gender or gender expression, and you can't get past two sentences without rolling your eyes and mentally thinking shut the fuck up. like, repeatedly.

[cosmogyros]

Jeeez I made the mistake of looking at the notes on the poll about "how far down your Wrapped does the first Black artist appear" (this post) and... having a mental re-adjustment.

I was remembering the post I made a while back, when I was reflecting on my Last.fm stats and bemoaning the fact that I didn't have even more women and artists of color in my Top 500. But after reading through the notes on that post... oof. I am apparently doing just fine. More than fine.