#because I didn't post it!

[queerwelsh]

Illtud Evans was born John Alban Evans on the 16th of July, 1913. His parents, Catherine and David Spencer Evans, a postmaster, were Welsh-speaking Nonconformists.

Though born in Chelsea, he went to Towyn Grammar School then St David's College, Lampeter (now the Lampeter campus of University of Wales, Trinity Saint David). However, he was expelled in 1934 for homosexuality - for attempting 'to induce a fellow-student to commit an act of gross immorality.'

He became a journalist then converted to Roman Catholicism and became Dom Illtud Evans of the Dominican Order. He became editor of 'Blackfriars' and 'New Blackfriars' journals and wrote for newspapers and magazines like 'Time and Tide' (a feminist magazine started by Lady Rhondda, which became more political and Christian after her death - though it also had become more right-wing with her changing views).

In the 1960s, he moved to the US, living in New York and California and visited prisons and rehabilitation centers as a priest.

Illtud Evans died on the 22nd of July, 1972 in Athens, having left the US in 1970 after a stroke.

Following his death, his friend Cliff Tucker began a campaign for Illtud Evans' exoneration and posthumous graduation, along with his partner Tony Dyson. They were both gay rights campaigners, Cliff Tucker having also gone to Lampeter University, giving his name to their Cliff Tucker Theatre. Cliff Tucker was successful and Illtud Evans was awarded his degree posthumously.

Sources & Further Reading:

Ruth Gooding, (2024), 'Evans, Illtud (John Alban Evans) (1913-1972), Catholic Priest,' Dictionary of Welsh Biography, https://biography.wales/article/s14-EVAN-ILL-1913

Papers of Tony Dyson and Cliff Tucker https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/6aa178a1-4379-3933-877d-9beeb47de025

Dom Illtud Evans Papers https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/5f573f63-23e2-3791-a383-d7ca593bef68

https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/special-collections/a-to-z/detail/?mms_id=992983876610801631

[archibaldtuttle]

I want to show you an actual training slide from my customer service job that I had to see yesterday.

[planefood]

rules for thee and not for me

[kesopan]

warmth in the cold

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept 11 attacks:

15 were from Saudi Arabia (a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

2 were from the United Arab Emirates (also a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

1 was from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq.

None of the Sept 11 hijackers were Iraqi.

None of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq.

[tossawary]

This is petty fandom salt, BUT... I've been chewing on this phenomenon that I've been calling "Fandom's Darling". It is related to things like "Author's Darling" and "Mary Sue / Gary Stu" and "Protagonist Halo" and all that jazz, where one character gains a peculiar narrative weight in a story.

"Author's Darling" is when a writer has a favorite character, and the world and all other characters sort of get... warped to put the Darling in the spotlight. It's most noticeable in TV shows with multiple writers, when a character you personally like suddenly has their previous characterization destroyed to make another character look good somehow. Every other character might become weirdly incompetent. The Darling's feelings are treated as The Most Important Feelings in any given situation. The logic of the fictional world seems broken past suspension of disbelief in order to validate this one character's beliefs or skillset or some other fantasy. And so on.

"Fandom's Darling" is what I've been calling the pattern where a fandom essentially crowns a New Protagonist for their fanfiction stories (it's often a side character rather than the original protagonist, but it can also happen to protagonists). This character becomes the self-insert for all sorts of indulgent fantasies, gaining special powers or backstories, and/or becoming the focus of extreme whump, and/or hooking up with all the various hotties, starring in all sorts of tropey AUs, and so on. They're not always an obvious Mary Sue version of themselves, but the character's original personality and interpersonal relationships tend to get warped or dropped completely, and other characters tend to become a little flat around them. I call it "Fandom's Darling" because it's not just one self-indulgent fantasy fic (you do you! Have fun!) with characterization choices that I don't vibe with (I have neither the time nor the desire nor the authority to police anything, I am just venting), but rather a prolific mini-fandom of sorts revolving around this empty doll / fanon version of the chosen vessel character, so it becomes a little unavoidable.

I am salty about this (mildly frustrated) (imagine a soft sigh of disappointment before I just go do something else) because you are FUCKED if you actually liked the canonical version of this character and their interpersonal relationships. It's almost worse than liking an obscure character that no one cares about. There's about a thousand fics starring your fave, but maybe only about a dozen of them are actually rooted in any kind of recognisable canon.

[h0tdog-water]

i don’t give a shit that he’s 6’2 i want him MOANING and WHIMPERING

[mroddmod]

WENDAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[clownowo]

been replaying the Portal series I think this is where its heading

[egophiliac]

should've just let Vil be the one to fly, it would've gone SO much easier. 😔

also HEY how are everyone else's pulls going, because I have had the most RIDICULOUS luck, seriously, halloween magic is 100% real

[sabh0]

@///_bsd_edits on Instagram gave me the idea to draw that based on one Ueda and Kimisawa interaction

The thing ^

[royalarchivist]

Ranboo: Hello, world. Hopefully my stream is working. I can't– is this good? Is this- is this good enough for everyone? Is this good enough? I'm live.

Ranboo: Fck, I'm not live on the right account! Oh my god, I'm live on Charlie's account–

[adobe-outdesign]

So in the Neopets' Battledome there's a challenger called Punchbag Bob who, true to his name, doesn't fight back. However, once in a while he's replaced with Punchbag Sid, who's just Bob with an eyepatch and the ability to deal up to 20K+ damage in a single hit.

Punchbag Sid is important because you get an avatar for fighting him. The problem, however, is that TNT has to manually activate him in order for him to appear, which has not been done since 2014 (aka ten years ago).

and then yesterday they just tossed him in for 20 minutes in the middle of the day without warning. people went fucking insane

[sir-camelot]

Zmarqa is one of my absolute favorite Hualian artists that I found on Twitter and this is just a taste of some of her more recent work.

She writes and draws her own comics of AUs involving them that have so much thought put into them. Her pieces in general are so detailed and you're almost always rewarded for taking the time to really look at them.

Since she's not active here on Tumblr, I would highly recommend following her on Twitter (zmarqa), Twitch (Zmarqaa), or, if you have the spare funds, Patreon (Zmarqa). Her Patreon Discord is full of great folks and she pretty frequently streams on there for patrons, so it is well worth the cost.

I did get permission from her before making this post with her artwork.

[tadc-harlequin-au]

Sneaky sneaker