#also the statement forms

[f0xgl0v3]

Calcedott tunnel makes my brain hurt; a list

Guys I read 38 pages of Tyrants tomb and already have beef with the extra forest that’s in a gorge next to a lake next to Calcedott tunnel and the highway that it presents. I’ll be talking about that, just you wait.

Okay, sorry, on the note of reading Tyrants tomb I have to get this off my chest. Here is a map that shows where the Calcedott maintenance tunnels are

(I found this map from Research gate; I’d link this but linking things on mobile Tumblr is really weird and difficult)

Lester says they turn onto highway 24. Except unless Lester has decided to not tell us they drove all the way through Berkeley/oakland as well. It’s such a weird way of getting them anywhere. Not to mention the fact that they land at Oakland airport; that should make it easier, right?

There’s Oakland international Airport. If we consider the route I will now try to draw a map of how they got there theoretically,

Okay, great, I over drew it a bit but you get the gist. Now, here’s the fun part. That Gorge that Lester swerves into, it’s not real. He’s not in the tunnels yet to reach the service tunnel for Calcedott (because the tunnels themselves are a roadway through a hill I believe) but that summons some major issues.

1) there is no place to put the gorge and lake that Lester and Meg fall into without bending Bay Area topography to our will

2) everything about Calcedott tunnel immediately makes no sense seeing as it’s a roadway that hundreds of people are driving through where there is no walk space for like Percy to be running and literally anything.

Maybe I’m simply just not understanding this, but when (from my knowledge) things like Camp Half-Blood can completely make geographical sense without moving anything geographically whatsoever. Then Camp Jupiter should make sense, and yet it doesn’t. I’m not talking about the valley itself because magic demigod magic can be protecting it. But stuff like the next to gorge with eucalyptus trees and the lake and the hidden tunnel.

I just- there is no point to this post except being confused over how this works. If anyone has any ideas feel free to provide those ideas, or if I’m just being a bit dumb then also please tell me. Tyrants tomb has made the Camp Jupiter Re-imagined map so much harder.

Anyway on that note I’m also going to be probably posting some concept drawings for the Magnus Institute building (and maybe it’s American sister institute-?) because the thing I want to know most as of being on Mag 33 is what the hiring process for the Magnus institute looks like, what are the roles in the institute? What job experience do they want someone to have, what’s the average job for people of the different like divisions look like- how do they advertise for new employees? The boring stuff :3

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[cosmicdreamgrl]

𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘫𝘬 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: (41/?)

[zukosdualdao]

if the roles were reversed and zuko tracked down mai specifically to yell at her for breaking up with him while she was imprisoned, sitting in an interrogation chair, and couldn’t leave, willfully putting her life in danger, called her “you idiot”, and threw a scroll at her head, i guarantee you people in-fandom would read zuko the riot act, and they’d be right to.

but that’s not actually what happened. mai did all of those things. and yet people defend her because they’re falling in line with the show’s double-standard of acting like it’s fine for mai to treat zuko this way. and there’s misogyny in that because the reason it’s not taken seriously and treated like it’s no big deal is because she’s a girl, and therefore how could she possibly hurt him?

the writers definitely didn’t intend (imo) for mai to be seen as abusive, but that’s a problem in and of itself because it means her behavior here, even if not ideal, is not being treated as all that bad. but with or without realizing it, they’re playing on a lot of tropes that indicate abuse, and it’s wild that people defend it.

[cheshirecat-syndrome]

Eden

[britneyshakespeare]

wait james somerton sounds a lot like some people on tumblr when they start spouting off about queer history or supposed controversies within it. is that where you guys are getting your stuff? is it james somerton brain poisoning?

[statementlou]

Louis might not be chucking bricks at No. 10, but people are responding like he’s never displayed leftist politics or challenged a government position on anything. He supported demands to the government about a fix for UK touring musician post Brexit and Marcus Rashford’s petition about food insecurity. He fought the police about their social media use in 2018 and criticised the UK government position/support for factory workers in the pandemic. The things he speaks about are usually UK issues and meaningful to him or his family and friends. He’s also most likely to speak when he isn’t working. Also that specific anarchy has a punk anti authoritarian message as well. That statement fits Louis pretty well. He has been a poster boy for not sitting down and shutting up and doing what you’re told since 2012. If he was he probably wouldn’t have a solo career and he definitely wouldn’t have sold out the O2.

I like this point about him speaking out more when he's not working, I think that's a really great and useful observation and makes so much sense. I feel like it makes sense in two ways right now: like first, I don't blame him for not wanting to do things that would jeopardize how beautifully everything is going for him right now after the number of setbacks and troubles he's had to get here, it must feel so precarious. And knowing for a fact that any political statement you make will spawn a dozen tabloid stories and all kinds of outrage is bad enough, but add to that the fact that it's simply impossible to predict which thing will turn into a huge viral mess- it's a lot. And second, he's not just working, he's been on TOUR! I've been around musicians my whole life and one constant is that tour is time outside of normal time and life, it's a bubble, it's only paying attention to right where you are and what's in front of you and the people there with you and everything else is put off and neglected, is for when you get home (and have massive post tour letdown depression and fatigue). I'm not saying he can disconnect with the outside world entirely... but putting everything on pause? I would be surprised if it were any other way, and I would be surprised if he's been following the news and counter news and so forth closely enough to feel comfortable speaking out publicly about anything when it will be so scrutinized and picked apart. I would add to your list supporting the rail strike (something we wouldn't even know about if it hadn't been tossed in as an aside by an interviewer in the print only version of a piece, he didn't post about it or anything) and attending and posting about the BLM protests (not to mention telling people to pirate his stuff come on how punk is that), and I agree he is much more likely to speak out about UK issues which makes sense: most people are most moved by issues that are close to their lives in some way, and it's his brand. And I agree that even though as an anarchist I love talking about what anarchism as a political ideology actually is, the symbol does also have a common meaning in the world as just basically standing for anti-authoritarianism, and Louis as a guy who rejects authority and the status quo is nothing new at all and one of the reasons we love him, and in the last few years I feel like he's been going further in that direction both aesthetically and politically, and we love to see it! Plus he has pretty much always sported this slightly punky aesthetic to some degree, even when he was being dressed up like a little ken doll he snuck in skater looks and indie band tees and so forth (something something it's part of why his fanbase was so primed to love his new sound and it wasn't the risk he feared it was because people were always drawn to him who were already into that aesthetic even when his sound wasn't that yet) it's not like it's just a brand new out of nowhere side of him or something.

[basalt-havic]

“Let me know if I ever reblog anything antisemitic teehee”

Okay but have you considered that you’re putting the onus on Jews to inform you instead of critically thinking about what messages you’re unintentionally sharing, and also potentially putting them in a situation where they do tell you but you override and invalidate their experience by insinuating that it isn’t valid or important

[bonefall]

since kits in starclan arent pernababys anymore would the same thing happen to apperntices? probably not but worth asking

It depends on the apprentice. Kittens who die tend to grow because they didn't have a lot of life to draw from anyway, but some apprentices have gone through so much that it feels right to them.

For Swiftpaw... there was no future.

His fate was sealed when his mentor's mentor's mentor was assigned to Thistleclaw, persisting in a doomed timeline. A line of gallantry, the sick idea that you need to prove yourself through dangerous feats, and that to live is to brush with death.

Nothing Brightheart could have done that day would have saved him, and yet on the mortal plane, she blames herself. Longtail loved him so, so much, and he still passed down a poison. Bluestar failed him. Fireheart couldn't help him. His short life was a march to its gruesome end.

He has the option of a full name, he may appear as an adult if he so chooses. But he doesn't... not yet at least. Perhaps someday before he fades. But for now, he is Swiftpaw of the stars.

[weaksspot]

actually i do have a few more thoughts. i think, to me, at least by the start of the series dean doesn't really have the kind of power over sam that would facilitate a one-sided abuser/victim dynamic. he doesn't actually abduct sam from his dorm room, he doesn't put a gun to his head and force him to come look for dad - my read of that scene is dean, scared, begging sam to come help him, because he can't cope alone. and sam goes because despite everything he does care about his brother and yeah, even his dad - dean doesn't have to manipulate him into it (though that's not to say we don't see manipulative behaviour at other points). sam is given outs, opportunities to leave, multiple times; dean offers to let him leave, and i don't think it's a false offer - it would have hurt him badly if sam took it but i don't think he would have tried to stop him. and when sam does go, in 1x11, it's not like dean hunts him down and forces him to come back, outside circumstances do that. and it's clear to me, too, that sam wants to go back to him! and dean is clingy, they are codependent, dean wants sam with him more than just about anything else, but i don't think that's unrequited. they both display pretty much equivalently extreme behaviour to keep the other one alive, to keep the two of them together. and i think dean is often at sam's mercy, emotionally, possibly even more than sam is at his - their relationship is often on uneven footing, but i don't think dean has the upper hand any more than sam does.

[itspileofgoodthings]

.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

I’m scared for the kids who might unknowingly buy the Harry Potter game or the books or the movies without knowing what’s going on. We need to ACTUALLY ban this franchise. Burn copies in stores. Smash your friend’s computer if you have to. I don’t know why we’re simply telling people to “read other books” and not going full scorched earth. There’s children out there who could be entrapped into this thing and not know until it’s too late…(It’s not censorship because it’s actually bad. Only minorities should be allowed to censor things because we know best.)

Nice try, buddy.

[nuctua-larc]

the blueprint the goth lesbian i love her vibes she is exquisite

[asleepinawell]

this little quest chain was one of my favorites in ew because of the perspective it gave into the ancients, a very different one from what little we get from emet and hermes. there’s pretty ample proof that their society was not in any way perfect and was actually really deeply flawed to the core, but this is a look at people, individuals, and ones outside of the main bunch we talk to

put in a read more to spare your dashes

they go to speed up the aether dispersal of some creations (animals) that were killed and they call the deaths distressing and want to find a way to pay respects to the fallen and bring peace to their souls. at the wol’s suggestion they gather flowers for the dead. and they say what amounts to a prayer over the bodies. it’s so very very different from how hermes believes everyone feels and how hythlodaeus spoke of ‘returning to the star’ being beautiful (though even hythlodaeus said a brief prayer for the first boss in ktisis hyberboreia)

and yes, they still talk about life and death in terms of ‘purpose’ and this is no way refutes the callousness towards other lives we’ve seen some of the ancients display in elpis, but my personal take is that it shows that some of them at least understood on some level that there were important things missing in their culture that they needed. even if they didn’t fully grasp why, they were searching for these missing pieces. in this case, a way to process grief and acknowledge the worth of a life, even a non-human life. and they also actively ask for the new ideas the wol presents and talk about incorporating them into their lives and duties

there’s also a ton of little side quests in elpis that involve one person asking you to find or check on another person, or to carry a message to them. there’s so many people who care about each other and are just absolutely godawful at expressing it in person and need the poor wol to act as an intermediary (this happens in present day as well but it was just every 5 seconds in elpis)

there’s one striking one where one person asks you to bring a second person a message about how that second person’s concept was approved and succeeding (I forget the exact details) in the hopes that it would dissuade them from returning to the star. it didn’t dissuade them and the first person accepted that pretty calmly, but the thought was there. there was this hope that they could keep someone they cared about around longer even if the argument they tried to use to persuade them came back to that grim ideology about ‘purpose’. they lacked the framework to think about it another way, but they still tried

it’s definitely a stark contrast from the shade amaurotines we saw in shb (assuming for the sake of argument that they were accurate depictions and not biased by emet which is a big assumption), especially the ones who turned the topic of ‘should we save the lives of others on the planet or just focus on ourselves’ into a casual debate topic as a pastime. there are really terrible ways of thinking about the world that have been ingrained into the population presumably from birth. that’s not something that can easily be changed. but it could be changed. the potential was there

at a societal level the ancient world was terrible in so many ways, and ultimately doomed if it couldn’t change, but at an individual level the people had so much potential and at least some of them were trying their best to make sense of the things their society denied them and adapt their lives

my personal takeaway from all this (which is just a headcanon aka an opinion and i’m not trying to sell as canon), was that if their society could have been changed then the ancients had the potential to have produced people who could have faced meteion. i’m leaving aside the questions of the timeframe and zodiark tempering everyone because that’s not my point. my point is that the ancients weren’t inherently unable to be who was needed to save their world. the density of their aether making them unable to interact with dynamis is highly symbolic of the flaws of their society, of course, but that shouldn’t have stopped them from talking to meteion, from showing compassion and understanding and hope in the face of despair

i’m not trying to take any jabs about any characters’ decisions in the story because the actual situation they were in was extremely complicated (like hey zodiark tempering people!) and that would also miss my point. mostly i’m just saying this makes the fate of their people even more depressing. they were an entire race of people who had all the potential that the sundered humans do despite being stuck in a shit society that happened to be shit in the exact way that made dealing with meteion and the final days a seemingly insurmountable task. their near-immortality and creation powers made it even harder for them to really understand the problem, but not impossible. they had the raw potential and lacked the tools to use it to save themselves. it’s just really damned sad

[peanut-with-wifi-access]

manifesting rose quartz/pink diamond vibes Nuwa for s5 please it would be fucking perfect

[curiouslyodd]

If there is anyone left who doesn't see this useless, lying, power-hungry cunt for what he is, I despair.

Fucking... 'stopping the violence will lead to violence'...

His entire argument is that if Israel stops indiscriminately bombing Palestine, Hamas might have enough time between dodging bombs to attack Israel again. Oh, and that a ceasefire would stop Hamas from releasing hostages (despite the fact that Israel rejected the request for a prisoner exchange including Palestinians that are being held indefinitely without charge).

Hamas aren't blameless here - the initial attack on Israel was monstrous, make no mistake. At no point should civilians have been targeted, and it is clear that many people were subjected to horrific cruelty during the attack. But while not justifying it, the cause for the attack lies directly in the hands of Israel's leadership. Decades of blockading Gaza, allowing only the barest trickle of aid to enter the area and preventing people from leaving. Constant harassment of Palestinians, often resulting in deadly violence. And direct funding of violent extremist groups to sabotage chances for peaceful resolution. Even if Israel completely switched tack and actively worked towards peace and integration, the wounds are so deep that such a process would take a long time.

But Starmer's solution to this is to say that the fighting has to continue, with the implication that it shouldn't end until Hamas has been eradicated. While senior figures in Israel have said that they consider all Gazans to be Hamas, and have been consistently targeting civilians since this current phase of the conflict began. And Netanyahu has actively called for genocide. I fully believe that even if all members of Hamas formally surrendered and gave themselves up, the bombings would continue uninterrupted.

In a way, Starmer is could be right. If there isn't a ceasefire, the violence in Gaza will eventually stop. Because the people who might have retaliated against this horror will be as dead as the civilians who didn't want to fight.

Can't commit violence against the dead. Certainly not if there's no one left to mourn them.