#it's because it's LITERALLY CODIFIED AS SUCH

[sunnyuto]

People like to rag on Connecticut, but we are one of the states you should really be considering if you intend to move to a trans or abortion refuge state. Connecticut:

- has consistently elected Democratic governors since 2010

- has had a Democratic senate majority since 1994 and only came close to losing that control in 2016 (it was 18-18 but the lieutenant governor was a Democrat so we retained control)

- has had a Democratic house majority since 1987 and has come nowhere close to losing it

- has not given electors to a Republican candidate since 1988 and has had a fully Democratic congressional representation since 2013

- our congressional delegation includes Chris Murphy, who is probably the #1 advocate for gun control in the entirety of Congress. He was the CT-5 representative when Sandy Hook happened, which is the district Newtown is located in, and took Senate office a few weeks later. He just won reelection so we have him until at least 2030.

- was one of the first states to add comprehensive coverage of transgender-related care to state Medicaid starting in 2015 and covers this care on both the adult and child plans

- allows legal sex designation changes with just an affidavit from a physician affirming gender dysphoria related care, meaning you do not have to have necessarily had surgery or be on hormones to change your gender marker (since 2015), has a non-binary gender marker

- repealed sodomy laws in 1971, recognized same sex civil union in 2005 and same-sex marriage in 2008, codified same-sex marriage in 2009 (under a Republican governor I will note)

- added sexual orientation as a protected class in 1991 and gender identity and expression in 2011

- has banned both the gay panic defense and conversion therapy

- was the first state to codify abortion access in 1990 up to 24 weeks in all cases and beyond 24 weeks in cases of medical necessity

- does not require parental consent or notification for abortion, does not require a waiting period or counseling session prior to an abortion

- has literally within the last 24 hours announced that they will be launching a legal assistance hotline for abortion rights

- “medically necessary” abortion covered by state Medicaid

- protects people who come from out of state and receive partial or total abortion care in Connecticut from investigation, prosecution, and extradition, will not cooperate with requests or subpoenas issued by other states for abortions that are legal under CT state law - 2021 HB 5414 was the first abortion sanctuary law in the nation

- has the third lowest violent crime rate in the country and the second lowest rate of sexual assault specifically

- ranks third for education

- ranks sixth on the International Human Development Index, comparable to Germany and Ireland, and second on the American HDI behind Massachusetts

- our cost of living is 13% higher than the national average, and likely higher in Fairfield County, but we are only 13th overall and 4th in New England. We rank fifth for overall highest tax burden. This seems like a negative, but it’s just an acknowledgement - safe blue states tend to have higher costs of living and higher tax rates. Anyone who knows how taxes work knows that this means you’re getting more services from your government in return. There’s a running joke here in CT that we have four seasons - fall, winter, spring, and road work - because of how heavily our state invests in infrastructure. This is a trade you will have to be prepared to make if you move to any trans refuge state. We’re still more affordable than the “go-to” blue states like California, New York, and Massachusetts.

Tl;dr, Connecticut is actually a fantastic state to live in, should you need to seek safety.

hello again (bill clinton limewire voice) my fellow americans

There are a few states that actually have Shield/Refuge laws designed to help trans people fleeing from trans-unsafe states, which also guarantee trans folks access to healthcare. These states are:

California

Colorado

Illinois

Oregon

Vermont

Washington

Minnesota

New Mexico

Maine

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Connecticut

Washington D.C.

Additionally, some states have "trans sanctuary" executive orders signifying safety for trans folks seeking healthcare. These states are:

Maryland

New Jersey

New York

Living as a resident in these states means you are protected by state's rights and state government to continue or begin receiving trans healthcare. These laws have been codified in their states so everything has been a-ok'd by their state governments.

Stay alive. You got this. I love you.

[starlitprism]

"That's a Major": My Marcille Degree Rant

OK we're starting with this. Funny right? Yeah.

BUT IT GOT ME THINKING

You know what no one brings up in that story? NO ONE?!

This is just a major. This is a MAJOR! YOU CAN DO IT AT HER ALMA MATER.

It is not HER FAULT that this was available. She went in, saw something interesting and went "COOL" because IT'S A MAJOR. Because apparently this CODIFIED FORM OF STUDY is also just something the elves hate. NOW, it honestly seems to surprise all the characters that this was a MAJOR she could choose but let's be honest here. This is just a reverse of the meme where experts greatly overestimate how much the average person knows about their craft. Of course they don't know. The only one that WOULD know in the story is the impetus for the whole FUCKING PLOT.

She who probably would respond by "yeah I know. That's on the curriculum. I took an intro class" BUT NO. We don't get that because she's too busy being dead or other weird shit partially thanks to that same set of courses. Like, you will notice everyone is super surprised when they bring her back but NOT HER. SHE KNEW. Everyone else is like "look at this unholy abomination" when it's just like a history degree. Seriously though, Falin seems a little surprised and disoriented at first but otherwise seems utterly unfazed at waking up in a blood circle surrounded by a dead dragon's innards.

THAT SAID, I am exaggerating for comedy. Here is what we actually know. In the very next scene in the hot tub, she does note that there was something about the circle that felt wrong to her. So maybe she didn't know her shit about this. Or, maybe she only knew about it academically as related to what Marcille studied and never seen or experienced it in any way. That or somehow Marcille managed to keep a secret from the woman she very obviously adores with her literal everything which I... doubt. Then again, she is Laios' sister so who knows if she carries the same level of general obliviousness (I am also autistic like Laios is so I can just state that outright. We can be fucking OBLIVIOUS at times).

It also goes to show, the elves are idiots. They are so certain that this is so unknown that they have to hunt individuals while there is some professor(s) somewhere just... teaching it. Or at least something related! For, like, a day job! And they never even think to ask "where are all these people learning this" NO. THEY DON'T. THIS IS GONNA KEEP HAPPENING. BECAUSE IT'S JUST AVAILABLE. AND THEY, in their hubris, can't imagine ANYONE EVER having this information BUT THEM. It could just be freely available and everyone knows not to talk about it because the elves got a SPIKE in their collective ass!

Ok, you ask, "but what if it was a secret?" and you know what? Fair. To that I have to say https://tenor.com/view/marcille-best-girl-failure-tantrum-breakdancing-dungeon-meshi-delicious-in-dungeon-gif-7429268588073434370

(The above is a picture and link to a gif of Marcille on her head, kicking her legs wildly because this girl doesn't react normally ever to anything) This. This is Marcille when something happens. She's not subtle. She has never been subtle. She commonly screams her reactions. I call bullshit on secret.

More importantly though, that's not really how education tends to work. People study something and, outside of MAYBE grad school level or PhD level minimum, you largely talk with people who know your subject.

You gotta remember, education is a bunch of nerds who want to talk about their shit. People don't just research something to know it. They research it to publish it and have it peer reviewed even if it's just an assignment they turn into their professor which I guess is like a first step to publishing.

Research is gathered, references found, pointed to, and then showed off. AND IN THE CASE OF PRACTICAL STUDIES, people do it! You got to prove your research was right. Otherwise it's a bunch of potentially useless theory. So if you think Marcille hasn't done SOMETHING like this before, there's no way. She was confident she could do SOMETHING about it. Just saying, I would pay a lot to see the face's on the member of her dissertation committee.

I brought this up with some friends and they mentioned that she might have just studied Dungeon creation and studied Ancient Magic on her own. And fair but then Ancient Magic wouldn't be her specialty would it? At least, except in a very egotistical self estimated way without ANY outside feedback which is a core tenet of education. Unless she was the pre-eminent lone scholar of ancient magic of course but she never goes on about that so i'm going assume that's not the case. Here is what we got from the show

In the show she says "What I specialize in is actually ancient magic which is highly forbidden. It's use is frowned upon but using it to revive Fallin, it's our best option"

When Senshi and Chilchuck, protested she just says "magic doesnt' have morality"

Now I could be wrong but for this wonderfully high-strung woman whose reactions are so so much, this looks practiced and calm. She either has defended this before, was quoting something someone else (like a teacher), or somehow she has suppressed all her beautiful exaggerated weirndess in the midst of ABSURD amounts of stress. Personally, I think Option 2 and 1 are more likely as this is a highly emotional subject for her and her self control is shit.

Like seriously, let's say her alma mater doesn't have a class that teaches ancient magic. Let's say, no one but her knows much of anything. What would happen if someone caught her in the library grabbing strange books that have scraps of ancient magic knowledge in them? She's allowed to be there but she's just so... HER that she would probably jump in surprise and try and justify it while trying NOT to reveal what she is researching. And because she has all the cool of a pickle, EVERYONE in school would know Marcille was up to something.

The above is a picture of Marcille losing her shit from a video titled "Marcille gradually losing her mind for 6 minutes || Dungeon Meshi. The link to it is https://youtu.be/gmY2x8_nnjw

So yeah, there would be rumors. The worst kept secret in the school is Marcille is a bad girl who researches something questionable. To say nothing of the fact that this girl has demonstrated major teacher's pet energy. I would put my money on there being at least one professor there who gets occasional downloads of ancient magic from one of their top students all while they look on going "I can tell no one" unless of course there is an actual program.

FOR MY FINAL POINT I HAVE BUT ONE WORD TO GIVE. Internet

By which I mean, the lack of it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to research something based only on the physical books you have access to in a specific location? IT TAKES AWHILE TO GET ANYWHERE.

That means travel for you or your subject matter and, with something like THIS that could be considered dangerous, you would have to be SO damn careful to make sure you don't get a reputation as "the ancient magic girl." That said, she's a (warning, spoilers) half elf so she has time. SO MUCH TIME. But we know it hasn't been too much time because Falin attended at the same time as her. Falin and her brother did various (failed) things for several years before Marcille showed up at the dungeon. I, at least, don't know how much time passed but they both clearly look to be in their 20s or so to me. Could be wrong due to the art style but that's just my read. At most, SUPER low 30s. Which means, Marcille couldn't have been traveling everywhere taking months and months to cross seas to get specific books for that long. That time would get eaten up so very quickly.

WHICH LEADS US back to the start. And my claim that the simplest most likely explanation IS

This Is

A Major

[doomdoomofdoom]

If nothing else, I want you to take this away from yesterday's presidential debate:

This is a literal, actual, verbatim quote.

[crossbackpoke-check]

inspired by @colap1nto <3 and posting here to hold myself accountable: writevember! attempting to write something every day no matter how much and what it is

i am however inventing stipulations for myself so i cannot weasel my way out of it, which includes a valid definition of “write”:

actively put words into a document in the form of a proper fic!!! too many wip not enough hands!!

poems (actually laughed at me coming up with this but maybe i will go back to my roots)

research/meta/primers

tag stories are permissible IF i actually compile and edit them into a readable document that day

editing to post to ao3 (the optimism) is also valid. it takes me so long

i do have concrete arbitrary deadlines for one and a half fics that i would LOVE to finish and post in november (dewey^2 and [redacted :)]) so i’m hoping this helps!! also, this is secretly just a sticker chart where i get to put down emojis for each fic i worked on and check off boxes but a win is a win

day 1: 🪻🐈‍⬛

day 2: 😇🤭 (🕒 -> 🕜)

day 3: 🫃2️⃣

day 4: 🍎

day 5: 🫃2️⃣

day 6: 📑, 💌

day 7: 🫃2️⃣ AND ☁️💧. who is she

day 8: 🪻🐈‍⬛

day 9: 🫃2️⃣

day 10:🫃2️⃣

day 11: 🫃2️⃣ we are on a STREAK and also a countdown 🫡

[variousqueerthings]

found another “hawkeye jokes about getting topped” example

[spacelazarwolf]

Hey there! I’ve really appreciated your posts and perspective over this past month, I’m having a hard time (as so many Jews are) and your voice helps.

I’m hoping you can help me with reliable resources. A friend of mine condemned the Hamas attacks etc (as they should, to my relief) but is under the impression that Israeli govt is doing genocide to the Palestinians. I’ve no idea how to approach that to verify (or not), I don’t even know where to start looking. Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you.

thanks! this is a really tough question, but i'm going to do my best to break it down. also if anyone's thinking of clowning on this post without reading it, inb4 "omg ur denying genocide!!!!!!" bc this post is literally outlining, in detail, all the ways the israeli government is, by definition, committing genocide.

this is really long, just a heads up.

a big frustration i have with a lot of progressive or leftist spaces is the tendency to throw around words like genocide without being able to define the term or properly apply it to the situation in question. this isn't just a semantics issue. if all you're doing is repeating the buzzwords you've heard on social media, your "activism" is going to be less than useless. it is crucial that if you are going to talk about the current genocide in gaza, you must be able to define exactly what a genocide is and how it applies to what's happening in gaza.

i'm paraphrasing from this article by the united nations. the word "genocide" was coined in 1944 by raphael lemkin in his book "axis rule in occupied europe." it was developed partly in response to the shoah, but also to previous instances of what we would now define as genocide. it was recognized as a crime under international law in 1946, and codified as an independent crime in the 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.

the definition of genocide

(from article II of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide):

in the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a. killing members of the group; b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

the 10 stages of genocide

a model created by gregory stanton, the founding president of genocide watch

classification - people are divided into "them and us"

symbolization - when combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups.

discrimination - law or cultural power excludes groups from full civil rights: segregation or apartheid laws, denial of voting rights.

dehumanization - one group denies the humanity of the other group. memmbers of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases.

organization - genocide is always organized... special army units or militias are often trained and armed...

polarization - extremists drive the groups apart... leaders are arrested and murdered... laws erode fundamental civil rights and liberties.

preparation - mass killing is planned. victims are identified and sepaarated because of their ethnic or religious identity.

persecution - expropriation, forced displacement, ghettos.

extermination - it is 'extermination' to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human.

denial - the perpatrators... deny that they committed any crimes.

application to the crisis in gaza

to start with the first definition from the united nations:

a. killing members of the group - YES

the death toll in gaza has risen above 8,000 according to the associated press. as far as i know, as of writing this post, there has been no ceasefire so the death toll will continue to rise.

b. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group - YES

over 20,000 people in gaza have been injured, and gazans - particularly children - suffer incredibly high rates of ptsd.

c. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part - YES

the israeli blockade of gaza has had devastating consequences for gazans. they are running out of food, water, fuel, and medicine, and this is costing additional lives.

d. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group - unclear but leaning toward YES

whether or not it is the explicit goal, the current bombardment of gaza has put the lives of 50,000+ pregnant women in gaza at risk, along with their babies. babies who need incubators are also in danger as generators begin to run out of fuel.

e. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group - as far as i am aware, NO

according to the us embassy in israel, the palestinian authority ministry of social development is the only authorized entity regarding adoption of palestinian children. this doesn't mean it isn't happening, it just means i was not able to find any credible sources.

the 10 stages of genocide

classification - YES there is a long history in israel of othering palestinians, both socially/culturally and legally. former israeli minister of interior and minister of justice ayelet shaked shared a racist quote from netanyahu's former chief of staff explicitly framing palestinians as "the enemy."

symbolization - not yet there are no overt symbols palestinians, even within israel, are required to wear to outwardly identify themselves, but there are identifying features on their ids. in fact, the opposite has been happening, with far right members of the israeli government attempting to pass legislation making it illegal to publicly display palestinian flags.

discrimination - YES there is, again, a long history of discrimination against palestinians within and by the state of israel. it is difficult for palestinians from the west bank or gaza to gain status in israel, israeli work permits are used as a form of control, and often forcibly separate palestinian families.

dehumanization - YES former israeli deputy minister of defense eli ben dahan said of palestinians, "to me they are like animals, they aren't human."

organization - YES israel is currently carrying out an organized and brutal attack on gaza.

polarization - YES from extremist groups like hamas, to the corruption in the likud party in israel, there are very clear signs of extreme polarization. israel's siege against gaza has caused polarization across the entire globe.

preparation - YES gazans in particular are unable to leave gaza without a permit, and now with the blockade from both israel and egypt they are essentially trapped.

persecution - YES gaza in particular could absolutely be likened to a ghetto. as stated above, (in "usual" circumstances) they are unable to leave without a permit, and since hamas took control it is nearly impossible to get an israeli work permit.

extermination - GETTING THERE if the siege continues and gazans are unable to get out of gaza, there will be catastrophic casualties.

denial - YES i often hear that "israel has a right to defend itself" but i cannot possibly find a way to frame the current siege as "self defense."

so in conclusion, israel is - by multiple definitions - committing genocide against gazans. and it's very important to be able to identify specifics, especially if you are planning on having discussions about it. and i've said it in the past, but if you are not directly affected by what's happening - palestinians in particular, but israeli citizens and jews and muslims in the diaspora are also getting hit hard - it is IMPERATIVE that you are able to talk about this with a level head. escalating tensions and pushing away potential allies is only going to make things worse. find common ground, form connections, and then have a productive discussion.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello Mr. Gaiman, hope this ask finds you in good health, I really need your help.

I’m a law student and currently taking a course on Law and Literature, brilliant by the way. We were given the freedom to chose a theme of our preference on the way law is represented through literature, and I thought Good Omens was the perfect subject for me.

I was interested in focusing on a faulty, inflexible system, especially one heavily influenced (in this case entirely made up) by ‘canon law’ and the way it influences social spheres. The incoherent dichotomy of moral good and bad, the way they influence ethical right and wrong translated into law.

What I was interested in is whether the legal system of Good Omens is based on positive legislation, or more on a customary, spiritual one. The reason why the question arose is the specific scene of ‘The Clue’, where Aziraphale openly ‘acts against the will of God’, and is convinced he will be brought to hell by Crowley. This is interesting to me, because in response he just says that he wouldn’t tell on him, and that was that.

Does that scene mean that angel status is not based on a spiritual(literal sense) monitoring of the soul, but rather about obeying statute and the way it is institutionally evaluated? Is there a set legislation, would it be God’s will? For that reason, would it be ineffable?

I feel like the fact that God is supposed to be omniscient would kind of undermine that theory, but nonetheless I wonder. I suppose that what I’m pleadingly asking for is some insight on the legal frame you maybe pictured for the Up and the Down (do they follow the same general legislation? Is it about legal pluralism? Are they monitored? Is it about lack of sufficient number of managers or oversaturated personnel?).

Pretty please,

A very desperate uni student

P.S. I’m very sorry about the length, I’m not good at summarizing things that I really enjoy. Also sorry for possible writing errors, English is not my first language. (If you see this more than once, sorry. As we’ve already established, I’m a little desperate)

I love these questions. Honestly, I don't think the Good Omens Heaven/Hell system is codified enough for me answer, other than to say both sides are very big on rules and have codes and agreements (see Crowley bluffing in the bookshop) and whatever you put in your essay I promise I will never turn up and maintain that you were wrong.

[astronicht]

Hi I hope this isn't presumptuous, but so, that post you made about Tolkien making the lads leave their weapons outside the hall and CS Lewis thinking the hall was gonna get burned down by a lady who also wanted to kill herself... what's the historical precedent for that? Is there a trope in medieval lit where people like... do that? I ask because uh. I am obsessed with Children of Hurin and there's a scene where that like, happens. And I'm obsessed with that scene, and would love to know if there's like, cultural/mythic context that would enrich my knowledge!

OH BOY, sorry I'm getting to this late, it's been uhhh a summer, but one, this is a very good question!! And two, yes there is absolutely precedent, particularly in early medieval literature, and high medieval literature set in the early medieval (circa 500-1100 AD) past. I'll let someone else debate how often people actually historically locked their enemies into a hall and burned them, but especially in Old Norse literature (and if Fellowship felt like it leaned a little more on Old English literature, Two Towers, where Eowyn appears, felt a little more Old Norse) this is common. Off the top of my head, you've got many Icelandic family feuds ending in burning the whole family in their hall, like Njal's Saga (Old Norse), Attila the Hun dramas (yeah he's a big guy in the burning halls circuit, but actually not in the way you might expect) like his cameos in Volsung Saga (Old Norse) and Nibelungelied (Middle High German), and my vague recollection of a few Irish and Welsh versions that no search engine is giving up for me right now.

This, predictably, got long and slightly off topic.

Disclaimer: As usual, I should say I come from an Old English-centric background, and Old English literature is actually notable among all its neighbors for not burning down too many halls. Second disclaimer, all links are not proper citations, they just go to wiki.

Hall-burning in literature is, to my understanding, part of the concerns of a few early medieval cultures in which revenge is not only expected but in many cases legally reinforced and codified, and one in which conflicts could spiral to engulf -- figuratively, or literally and in flames -- entire families. Many medieval Icelandic sagas are focused on this exact type of destruction of whole families or friendship/community units. Most relevant of these to Eowyn, Two Towers, and the vibes of Edoras (since alas I am only partway into RotK and can't speak to Children of Hurin yet!) is Volsung Saga, which is set on the Continent, not Iceland, and actually has to do with Attila the Hun. As mentioned before, an incredible amount of stuff turns out to have to do with Attila. We will come back to him!

So, on the particular post you're talking about, a few people iirc have replied pointing out that the hall in TT is clearly supposed to be based on a hall from Old English literature, namely the hall in Beowulf, which famously did not actually get burnt down. And that's all true! I was not posting with much nuance; I was mostly having a joke at the expense of CS Lewis. However, I was also referencing a very very common trope in Old Norse/early medieval stories, and I personally think JRR was as well (AND I think Beowulf was also very consciously referencing the exact same motif anyway) (no one has to agree with me, a tumblr blog, on any of these points).

The thing about the hall when our heroes approach is that the scariest damn thing in that hall is Eowyn. Certainly not every hall-burning story requires a woman with no other recourse to set the fire (in fact, the "warrior band approaches unknown hall which might have a grudge against them" is a trope that can get you killed in a pretty homosocial environment, as I guess Aragorn at least was aware, being a big reader). Still, the presence of a woman who is swiftly running out of options does fit what I'd consider one of the or perhaps The best known version of the early medieval burning hall trope: Gudrun, who shows up in at least a dozen different texts in both the Scandinavian and the German language traditions, including Volsung Saga, a text which itself often gets paraded around as the basis of lotr (which I'm sure it is, in that JRR appears to have simply and very fairly based lotr on every piece of early medieval vernacular literature I can think of).

In a portion of Gudrun's story (which of course changes a bit in each retelling), after her first marriage she is unhappily married to Atli, who is none other than our main man Attila the Hun. After Attila kills her brothers for reasons (in one version, her father), seeing no other way to take the necessary revenge and no other way out, she kills the two sons she had by him, serves them to Attila for dinner, has Attila killed, and then sets fire to the hall with everyone in it. After this, she attempts to drown herself.

The self-destruction of this act is a really important beat, and has only gotten more-so as a comparison to Eowyn the further I've read into RotK (currently, I'm at the houses of healing after merry and eowyn take on the witch king). It's a lot clearer in the book than the films, for me, that Eowyn going off to battle was not so a straightforward empowering and/or freeing move, despite allowing her some agency, but more the one path she saw as available to her with which to die with honor (which was pretty much exactly what Gudrun was facing as well). Like Gudrun, whose first husband was a great hero but has died, Eowyn's romantic choice is a hero who is presumed dead (sorry Aragorn they did Not believe in your ghost skills). In fact, in some versions Gudrun does put on armor and fight with her brothers before they're killed. She kills Attila with her own hand, with the help of another man who needs to avenge a blood feud against Attila.

So while Eowyn didn't get forced into marriage to Attila Wormtongue (with apologies to both historical Attila and that one historical skald also called Wormtongue who was reportedly hot) and burn the whole place down, she's still trapped, and like Gudrun chooses destruction alongside her household.

Reading her arc feels so much like watching Tolkien write a fix-it for Gudrun. What if she got this one little chance, and this one other little chance, and this one more -- tiny little shifts in the narrative that allow her to get out, and not through fire, and not through death.

Anyway, this got away from me. I hope it added some context to the Children of Hurin arson case! Thanks for the ask

[whetstonefires]

when i was a kid i made up a society where they tracked birth sex for reproductive reasons but it didn't particularly determine adult gender, because that was tied to your job--like at some point they got so attached to gender roles that they decided the performance of a role determined the gender. (which historically has been the case quite often, just not to this extent lol.)

it was in the context of a badly written short story where an anthropologist had just straight up failed to grasp that this was how it worked for a humorously long time.

If somebody pitched me traditional gender roles for the first time they would have me in the first half not going to lie.

Oh, in a complex society with a massive amount of required knowledge and responsibilities, two people traditionally partner together so that the knowledge and responsibilities can be divided between them? Awesome!

Wait what do you mean the responsibilities are assigned at birth.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE HALF HAS FEWER CIVIL RIGHTS.

[theghostkingisdead]

The anti-ecto acts confuse me so much. How do they even work? How were they passed? How on earth do the remain a secret?

They’re acts, so they had to have been passed by congress. You’re telling me a minimum of 543 people learned about the existence of ghosts and nobody said anything about it? Be real.

543 congresspeople, plus their aids and secretaries and families? That information leaks fast, if not before the act passes then definitely afterwards. And once somebody says something it won’t go ignored by the general public. The US government just admitted ghosts are real? That’s getting national news coverage even if it was bunk.

Laws are public works. They aren’t sealed documents, literally anyone is allowed to look at them.

Also there’s the matter of enforcing them. Who are the GIW? A branch of the FBI? The military? The acts probably outline methods of enforcing them, which means even if they aren’t brought up by name whatever department they work for has to be mentioned.

A law gets passed allowing private military contractors to open fire on US civilians on US soil? Even if it specifies nonlethal force (assuming ecto-weapons don’t hurt humans) and even if they work around the civilian problem by renouncing ecto-entities as us citizens…

They’re still going to catch massive flack for using unknown chemicals in densely populated civilian areas. Humanitarian and Environmentalist groups will be all over this shit so fast.

Anyway I’m running out of steam, but I’m basically convinced that codifying the anti-ecto acts into law is the stupidest thing the GIW could’ve done. Because yeah now you have power, but now everyone knows what you’ve been doing and you’re under official scrutiny. They should’ve just done what the government always does - act without telling anyone and then deny deny deny when people rightly accuse you.

[zeravmeta]

don quixote fgo is just so good, he is such a hopeful character and i absolutely think he's the standout from traum

what really strikes me about him is that traum is a story dedicated to broken ideals and unfulfilled dreams: the major players of each faction are all characters with failed ambitions and who wage war against panhuman history to achieve those dreams. kriemhild wants revenge on siegfried even after killing hagen, komstantinos wants to remake his old empire, johanna abhors that she is a living fictional character and wants to become a real person, all the nameless servants from each faction are dedicated to rebel not only because of zhang jue's influence but because they all, in some form, had unfinished business, dreams they never fulfilled. this even extends to moriarty himself, a younger version who's fixated on defeating holmes because his older version could not, and he follows through on it because he did not really understand the value of his own nemesis, a fact that ultimately left him defeated no matter how much he tried to control fate. All of these characters refused to face the reality of their failures, and honestly don quixote was the most guilty of this

he was originally a servant summoned in the atlantean lostbelt, and genuinely did try to rally heroes, but as he saw these legendary figures he adored be struck down he lost hope. it wasn't just that he was afraid, it was that the heroes around himself had given up even before him, a craven old man.

the thing is though that the reason don quixote and sancho ran is antithetical to the reasons that the other servants ran: they did it specifically to survive. sancho was able to convince don quixote to leave because she reminded him that it wasn't wrong or evil to want to live, and this was only possible because don quixote, despite being a servant, still thinks of himself as being human. even though he consciously understands himself as being a servant, his way of thinking and reasoning is undeniably that of a normal human

A big part of his too is that traum is also a singularity in which the names of heroic spirits have lost their meaning: the sheer volume of servants means that there is no singular standout hero, sure, but when kriemhild killed the lancer who was about to declare his name she called him merely a foot soldier because said name was worthless, in traum there is only the endless war of people slaughtering each other, and ironically a unifying peace in that.

names are the linchpins of heroic spirits: servants aren't the ghosts of dead people, they're the manifestations of what those legends meant to humanity, all codified by the names they carry. servants have to name themselves and have names for their noble phantasms which directly identify them because they are literal living legends. Yet in traum, those names and legends and meanings become all but worthless in the face of endless war as armies of these protectors of humanity are reduced to mere foot soldiers. there is a similar parallel to this when vlad goes to the righteous realm, and as he sees the army gathered he finds it entirely lacking because it's fully composed of singular standout heroes who are all used to essentially being the main character and thus cant function as a unit. Traum is a world where being a hero has no meaning.

but i think that's also why don quixote declares himself against konstantinos and challenged him: in this moment, he reclaimed the value of being a knight who fights for his ideals, that of a true hero

konstantinos throughout traum is presented as equally a legendary figure as charlemagne is, and yet his reason for fighting is incredibly simple: he's in love with johanna and wants to make her real to panhuman history, and to this end he'll continue the war in traum as needed for that end. kriemhild has an equal but opposite reason rooted in the same thing: love. she wants revenge against siegfried for having gone through with hagens plan, for not letting her in to his pain, he was too much of a hero for everyone that it led him to sacrificing himself even if it would hurt her. konstantinos wanted to be the perfect knight, and kriemhild wanted to get revenge against her own knight for being too perfect.

The thing is, despite their insistence on traum being the cruel reality of a war, both of them were holding onto rather idealized, almost romanticized versions of what a knight should be.

konstantinos knows and declares don quixote as being likely the most famous knight to have ever lived, but he dismisses him as a threat when actually fighting him. When he's about to finish him, he tells don quixote that he has to face reality as he's about to die. However, the story of don quixote was always that of an old man whom lost himself to his fantasies of chivalry and knightly idealism, and despite the troubles he caused still continued to fight for what he believed was honorable. Even if he had returned to reality in the end, there was still meaning to the outright silly journey of an old man knight long past the age of chivalry, of the old man who, despite his fear, still chose to rally an army and fight for the world he felt he had failed.

what traum needed was someone who did good not as a hero but as a human. almost every knightly character in fate carries grand ideals as to why they are knights, but the only requirement to BE a knight and a hero is the simple desire to do good for others, and don quixote is fittingly the most famous knight in the world because he's utterly obsessed with the great chivalric legends of old, yet still strived to do good in the way normal people do.

it's why charlie finds him so inspiring, as well

for all the non-extella link players, charlemagne as we see him in fgo is actually the fictionalized version of him from the tales of the paladins of charlemagne and not the actual karl der Große. He's even more fictionalized than johanna and don quixote himself, because while johanna might have been an erroneous account and don quixote a story book character, charlemagne is a full on sensationalized re-imagining of an already real person. but even if he may be a fictionalized person, what he represents is what matters the most, the same with any heroic spirit, which is why charlemagne considers johanna just as real and why the actual karl der Große saw fit to send him to traum

at the center of traum we ultimately find wakamori, who despite seeming cruel and mysterious throughout the entire plot, has shown multiple times that he's essentially trying to fill in bigger shoes than he can: He's obsessed with defeating sherlock and presenting himself as the ultimate evil, but he's still green at the end of the day, and I think this is in part what leads him to somewhat even respect don quixote

when he tries to taunt don quixote, he does so with the assumption that much like himself, don quixote is attempting to play the part he represents most: don quixote is surely trying to be the greatest most idealized version of a knight, the same way wakamori is trying to be the perfected version of himself, the true evil mastermind whom can finally defeat sherlock. But don quixote flat out tells him that conflict and even life itself has always had no inherent meaning nor any inherent roles to play, so much in the same way that he has no special value to his life tied to being a knight, wakamori's own value is not tied specifically to that of being sherlock holmes' greatest evil rival. There's a surprising empathy in this exchange I feel, because don quixote understands wakamori immediately where it took sherlock the entire story: there's nothing wrong with being a little delusional, but you have to treat them with respect.

wakamori ultimately fails because he believed that defeating sherlock would finally give value to james moriarty as the ultimate villain, unaware that sherlock holmes is the defining equal to james moriarty. there is no purpose to a story with an evil mastermind that doesn't have an equally great hero trying to stop him, and wakamori failing to understand that his own value as such is not diminished by not having ever defeated holmes is what ruins him: He didn't respect the story he was so enthralled by. shinjuku showcased a similar dynamic, but the difference between shinjuku and traum is that the older moriarty very much understood what it would take to succeed, and that would be to become the protagonist of the story, rather than the ultimate final boss.

the stories of knights and heroes and monsters and spurned loves and great detectives and evil masterminds are all in part defined by the meanings that people derive from them, from the ordinary good that they can inspire first and foremost. And even though don quixote may have been a craven old man who eventually gave up chivalry, he still tried to live a good life and do good the way any ordinary person would.

And that's such a genuinely hopeful and kind sentiment to tie to the concept of knightly ideals: you don't have to be grand to be a hero, and you don't even have to be a hero to inspire others.

[tangibletechnomancy]

Economic anxiety has a way of bringing out reactionary sentiment in anyone if they're not careful.

It is deeply, deeply frustrating to watch it play out in front of me in leftist spaces such that self-proclaimed leftists are using actual, literal fascist arguments about Real Art vs. Fake Art and Real Labor vs. Lazy Button-Pushing.

These things don't become any less bad when you SAY your enemy is "some rich techbro" while calling broke disabled hobbyists "evil soulless automatons".

The central logic doesn't become true when you SAY you're targeting an inhuman machine while you screech obscenities about a great replacement at its operator.

When you say one minute "there is no unskilled labor, only undervalued skills", it doesn't magically absolve you of saying "nooo, you were supposed to automate away the BAD and DEMEANING jobs with no financial safety net for the workers, not THIS one I consider RESPECTABLE" in the next breath; it only makes you a fucking hypocrite.

"Fair use for me but not for thee" is not a rational position to prevent plagiarism and forgery; it's just a means to codify an ingroup and an outgroup.

"Degenerate art" is always, ALWAYS a reactionary and proto-fascist thing to believe in, even if you wrap it up in other fancy words because you know "degenerate" is a Bad Word. "There is Good Art that makes society better and Bad Art, if you can even CALL it Art at all, that will rot our brains and turn us all into mindless drones if it's allowed to survive" cannot be made into anything but a reactionary position! Period! End of!

"Lazy button-pushers" are EXACTLY what corporations want you to think ANY automation operator is, so they can take credit away from those employees and criminally underpay them. They said the same damned thing about digital artists back in the early days of Photoshop. They say the same thing about overworked VFX artists today. You are DIRECTLY helping them make it worse with this argument.

The same old fucking trick of making you uncertain of your financial future so you lash out at other victims of the system because you "can't take the risk" of coming together to fight the actual enemy? Is working a FUCKING treat on way too many people who pride themselves on Not Being Like That - and it's even worse because a lot of the time pointing this out will get nothing but denial because maintaining pride in a leftist, progressive, pro-labor, pro-human Identity is more important to way too many people than ACTUALLY identifying the root of reactionary sentiment and the strategies used to spread it.

It makes me genuinely feel like I've fallen into a Fox News convention, hearing all these blatantly reactionary arguments and actively self-defeating strategies to Protect Labor.

[lurkingteapot]

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

[inkskinned]

im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:

videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.

and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.

this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.

there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.

there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.

for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.

i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.

here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."

eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.

we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.

"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"

thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.

it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.

an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.

and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."

[starburstdragon]

Actually even though it’s been a few years since I last read the books I want to elaborate on Lady Alys Vorpatril, Greatest Of All Time, from the Vorkosigan Saga.

Her earliest chronological appearance has her guiding the protagonist of the book in question (Cordelia Vorkosigan, formerly Cordelia Naismith) through the imperial high society that marriage has suddenly thrust her into. Alys isn’t a physical badass like Cordelia is, but she knows her terrain (the social sphere) and she plays it very well. Both womens’ husbands and unborn sons are targeted by a coup (not a people’s revolution, just some other noble guy who thinks he should be in charge instead) due to their relatively close relations to the imperial family (the husbands are cousins through a dead princess) and Cordelia needs to rescue Alys and help her through the birth before getting her out of hostile territory (during all this, Alys is widowed).

Alys then becomes one of the most influential people in the entire empire. She and the Vorkosigans help raise the child who was the only survivor of the imperial family while he grows up and learns to be a very competent emperor. Shes in charge of hosting events and all that entails for the imperial household because (again) there was only one survivor of the imperial family. She is friends with like Every Politician’s Wife. Her son is 4th in line to the throne and has such himbo energy that people keep trying to get him unwittingly involved in treason, but Alys didn’t raise a fool, or if she did she at least managed a politically conscious one, so it never works for any of those people. When the empire’s spymaster of like 30 years retires she ends up marrying him, and they’re compatible because they’ve spent that whole time doing the exact same shit with different people. She is instrumental in codifying trans rights.

Literally the top quote on her wiki page is “Richars Vorrutyer sat right there and informed me that Lady Alys held no vote in Council. The fact that she has spent more years in the Vorbarr Sultana political scene than all of us here put together seemed to escape him.” She’s the best ever.

[drbased]

It's interesting to me how patriarchial ideology generates all these specific paranoias

dominance is about proving who is best -> men dominate women -> women are fundamentally masochistic -> women seek out the most dominant male -> but what if that dominant male isn't me?

I was listening to a thing about satanism just now and it was mentioned that one of the beliefs about witches is that they lust after demons, and my immediate thought was how men are so desperate to entirely fabricate a view of female sexuality for their own ends and then get terrified of the natural conclusion of that. Because if women are fundamentally masochistic, and demons exist, then of course women are going to want to submit to them, right?

It's built into the psychology of racism as well - black men are more bestial and violent, but also violence is a way of gaining dominance, and regardless women are bestial and masochistic, so then a paranoia is formed where white women secretly desire to submit to black men - to debase themselves in the most obvious way, the veneer of the purity of whiteness stripped back to reveal the inherent whore nature of the female underneath. and of course there's overlap with the fundamentals of incel ideology - these men are obsessed with women's degeneracy and masochism causing them to submit to the 'wrong' men causing some spiritual downfall of society. and the three examples all blur and mix together, associating blackness with bestiality, satanism/occult practices with bestiality, and said bestiality with moral degeneracy and disruption of some natural healthy order where the men who do dominance 'properly' should be on top.

and it's all entirely made up. the fact that there is no true definition of 'healthy dominance' is entirely what fuels this paranoia. in reality, dominance is just harm and abuse, but men have to try to find a way to invent some righteous and healthy form of said harm and abuse - it has to be codified and controlled. that way there are always scapegoats: the men who do masculinity 'wrong' onto which women's fears can be directed, so that men as a class never get to be held accountable. men will hold onto these paranoias so they never have to engage with the underlying ideology. the benefits of dominance are too potent. this is the classic 'patriarchy hurts men too' - the ideology of patriarchy is exactly the same as that of self-harm; the harm becomes a closed feedback loop, a sunk-cost fallacy whereby the self's personhood becomes reliant on a destructive lie. men will literally kill themselves because they lose their ability to recognise the value of human life, instead seeing their identity as part of a collective narrative, and so murder-suicide becomes a form of martyring to send a message to other men and women that men will dominate at all costs, and that said domination is righteous is a pseudo-spiritual sense.

so much of our societal energy has been wasted on this. and now as we're on the cusp of recognising that dominance isn't righteous, we turn our attentions to how bad it is for men that they're hurt by the psychological impact of this ideology. in doing so our attentions are redirected, away from the benefits of why this ideology exists in the first place, and therefore accidentally reinforcing it. the psychology of the abuser is always that his narrative is of greater importance than anyone else, and the moment attention is taken away from those he hurts is the moment we capitulate to his ever-consuming demands. we give him an inch, he will take a mile. because for all the focus on getting men to be softer, more open etc. without also holding them accountable, we're simply adding to their narrative through giving them a superficial redemption arc. said softened male will still implicitly believe in his dominance over women even whilst he explicitly claims to be against dominance as a concept. that's how we end up with pro-porn and pro-bdsm 'leftists' - those who seek to reject the pseudo-spiritual righteousness of dominance but loop right back around into believing it can be codified and controlled, whilst utilising that to scapegoat the right-wing, who in turn scapegoat the leftwing as their dominance is codified and controlled in the form of traditional gender roles. the patriarchal system then resumes as usual, a bit shaken in confidence perhaps, generating much more powerful paranoias (e.g. incels) that then also get folded back into the fix in the form of further scapegoats, rinse and repeat.