#am researching

[rosesutherlandwrites]

Today’s (final? Possibly?) research task is a trip to La Concergeirie and then along the path of Marie Antoinette’s final journey to Place de la Concorde. No doubt I will be stymied at the final intersection by something Olympics-related, which has been an ongoing theme of this trip, but it’ll be fine.

No I’m NOT planning a Marie Antoinette book. I’m setting something in the directorate era and the main character has a formative memory of being front and centre at her execution as a child, and I want to possibly prologue it—also something something thematic about how we build women up to tear them down.

[melanielocke]

Question:

I am researching for a new WIP. It's called You are not the Chosen One and is a subversion of the Chosen One trope. In this world, it's typical that every generation or so, the biggest threat is defeated by a chosen one, and I want those past chosen ones and conflicts be similar to how the trope often plays out in fiction. The story itself takes place as another big threat that's been around for some time becomes impossible to ignore, but the mc sees there is no chosen one this time. Because no one believes him, he convinces a girl who wants nothing more than to be the chosen one that she's the chosen one. She knows everything there is to know about chosen ones, but I am still working out what that is.

So, what are things you often see with chosen ones? What tropes are often repeated? What do you think of when you think of the chosen one trope?

@alastaircarstairsdefenselawyer @life-through-the-eyes-of @astriefer @justanormaldemon @ipromiseiwillwrite @a-dream-dirty-and-bruised @amchara @all-for-the-fanfiction @imsoftforthomastair @ddepressedbookworm @queenlilith43 @wagner-fell @cant-think-of-anything @laylax13s @tessherongraystairs @boredfangirl16 @artist-in-soul @aliandtommy @ikissedsmithparker

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[weaver-z]

I do understand that "intelligence tests" are inaccurate and stupid. That being said, does anyone want to see the IQ test question so terrible that I felt I had to stand up and leave the room?

[syneester]

hello tumblr nation, have my attempts at finding a style that is less time consuming that my usual one

[lunarw0rks]

john “big stretch” price

simon “make it fit” riley

soap “just the tip” mactavish

kyle “give me one more” garrick

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Why self-diagnosed autistics are valid

medical diagnosis can be expensive

humans are the experts on their own minds

family may prevent assessment

diagnosis criteria is a poor checklist of stereotypes

diagnosis criteria ignores gender, race, sexuality, culture & more

medical diagnosis confirms autism, but doesn't create it

discrimination within the medical profession may prevent diagnosis.

Assessment waiting lists often long

medical trauma may make assessment unfeasible

Neurodiverse Journeys

[tam--lin]

In light of increasing anti-trans and anti-abortion laws in the United States, I am once again humbly requesting you inform yourself about jury nullification, your ability as a juror to vote against convicting people being prosecuted under unjust laws. Nullification was instrumental in legalizing abortion in Canada - it informed jurors can use it to help protect healthcare workers and protesters in the US, too.

[naomiruthwrites]

Roommate: “You can just write things.”

Me After Spending 45+ minutes researching Penjerrick Gardens & hunting down specific plants from said Gardens as pictures on Instagram posts such as alstilboides tabularis, shieldleaf rodgersia, and Gunnera manicata:

“Can I though? Can I really ‘just write things’? I would LOVE to just write things. But CLEARLY our brain is incapable of ‘just writing’ anything.”

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[rosesutherlandwrites]

Things I know about writing historical that I didn’t really get until recently: writing in times and places you have already learned loads about through osmosis (for me that’s Nova Scotia—and the early 1830’s, thanks Les Mis fandom?) is a lot easier than leaping a project set somewhere and when you don’t already feel in your guts (southern Auvergne, 1760’s)

It’s much harder to latch onto the rhythm and flavour of a place you only lived in for two months, while doing a hard core internship, without realizing you would one day want to set a novel there, the research and imaginative leaps involved are REAL

[thearchivebaby]

"Interpreters often locate [religious environmental] projects along a cosmological continuum, from anthropocentric to nonanthropocentric.

… Consider, for example, interpretation of environmental justice, which is perhaps the most significant Christian contribution to public environmental deliberation in the United States. When the United Church of Christ’s report “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” described a racist distribution of environmental hazards, it sparked a momentous perceptual shift in the connection between environmental and social justice concerns (United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice 1987).

Charges of environmental racism connected ecological integrity to human dignity, capturing new attention from churches and policymakers alike and shaming mainstream environmental organizations into reorienting their public priorities … 

When evaluated by the criteria of anthropocentrism and nature’s value, environmental justice seems a less radical and more anthropo- centric companion to strategies that more fully develop respect for nature itself. By [Lynn] White’s criteria, environmental justice looks conceptually immature and cosmologically conservative in relation to more ecocentric theologies.

To categorize it that way, however, would miss how environmental justice innovatively expands human dignity through ecological and social space in order to meet a specific political problem.

And to miss that innovation would perpetuate the disconnection between environmental thought and critical race theory; in other words, missing the pluralism here perpetuates the whiteness of American environmental theory.

Environmental justice represents its own strategy of religious ethics, one responsive to an embodied and raced experience of environmental problems. The serial association of toxins with minority geographies represents a racist production of social bodies.

From within those bodies, this theological ethic starts its response, beginning not from a dualist separation of humanity from environment—as [Lynn] White saw the crisis—but from the collapse of distressed environments into oppressed human bodies.

Environmental racism represents not so much the alienation of the social from the ecological as it does a social ecology of death. It is a “contemporary form of lynching a whole people” (Townes 1995, 55)."

Willis Jenkins, "After Lynn White: Religious Ethics and Environmental Problems", 2009

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[anxiousapplepie]

Just spent every free second of my day drawing Traveler!Odile. So might as well take this inspired opportunity to talk about her? maybe? If anyone is interested, read some of my vibes below!

As I might've mentioned before (or maybe not, I can't remember what I have and haven't said) Traveler!Odile's deal is that she's been living in Vaugarde for roughly 20 years before the King started freezing the country in time. Long story short, after her mother left her as a child one of her many, MANY uncles reached out to her dad and gave them both the option to connect with his Vaugardian in-laws one day. If they wanted to! They didn't have to! But the uncle made it clear the extended family would love to meet Odile one day, if she ever wanted to do that too. And during a bad year failing to cope with studying in college, Odile decided she'd give it a shot. See what "the other side" was like. Amongst other reasons. So she took a study break, meeting the uncle who first gave her father the addresses where some of her mother's family could be found. Then she extended her study break, traveling and meeting with various cousins and relatives. Which then turned into an indefinite break, where she just....... didn't go back to Ka Bue. Always moving around, finding more roots of a family tree she hadn't cared to be a part of until now. And longer, LONGER story short, she got so interested in all the Familytales that belong to her mother's side, she started diving deep and began connected stories and filling in blanks and accidentally became the unofficial editor and chronologist of the family. Yet despite being allowed access to all these Familytales, being invited to family dinners and homes and being seen by everyone else as "part of the family" she never let herself get involved in relationships beyond reading about them in all the books she studied more than anything she had in Ka Bue. And of course she never included her own stories or experiences in any of the Familytales. Why would she? This wasn't about her. This was about her Vaugardian family. Something nobody else could fathom or understand her logic for. Which of course means she's ripe for the picking when a bunch of young adults and a child claiming to be blessed by the Change God walk into her life and give her an impossible hope and a chance to do something more interesting than rewrite family secrets or edit genealogies. Maybe writing an accurate account of the journey a Child Hero took to save the country from being frozen in time would be more fulfilling.

[thisischeri]

iMac G4, Apple, 2002

instagram: cheri.png