#longposting incoming | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

therekinperson · 1 month ago

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Another longpost filled with blogs and places where you can donate to people in palestine!!

ahlamramadan https://gofund.me/61f1dd1f

"I am 54 years old and have 9 daughters and a son. I suffer from kidney failure, and with limited hospital resources, I ask you to help me go out to receive treatment so that I can take care of my children."

(Vetted by @gazavetters)

ezzaldeens-blog https://gofund.me/e171bfb4

"Please don't hesitate to donate to us, I now live in a tent with my family"

hassanmadi2 https://gofund.me/1c7df49e

"Before the war we had a big house, but because of this war, our house was destroyed and we were displaced to the south of Gaza"

(Vetted by @el-shab-hussein @nabulsi)

ahmedsobeh2009 https://www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=EJ892Z3JYTPYS

"I have autism, which means I sometimes find things a bit hard. Before the war, I used to go to therapy sessions to help me, but now I can't because of the war."

(Vetted by: @el-shab-hussein @moayesh @nabulsi)

nourasissue4 https://gofund.me/32f1f5e4

"But sadly that the war happened in Gaza in October 2023 and we have been stuck in Egypt ever since without any source of income, and I don't know how to provide for my beautiful daughter's Hanan needs and how to pay for the house and the rest of life, plus our house was bombed in Gaza. please support me to set up my own medical analysis laboratory and complete a master's degree in Egypt."

shinytastemakerphantom https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=B9Z7ET32DJGSJ

" I was diagnosised with type 1 diabetes and due to current situation in Gaza I'm unable to get my insulin injection as a result I'm here begging for little financial support to help me purchase insulin for this week"

lastdosesworld https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=JQGZEXZRFPFHC - $370/$450

"My family is still staying in half of the church that wasn’t affected by the bombing because there is nowhere else to stay other than tents. They are limited to one small meal a day and one shower a week. They are sleeping on the floors, but no one can sleep since there is bombing everywhere around them."

abdallahblog0 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/RawanMous

"help me to evacuate from the war and complete my dream of studying medicine, I am still a young man, 20 years old, I have many dreams that I want to achieve, help me please, share and donate" (Vetted by @90-ghost @Heba-20 @gaza-evacuation-funds)

joyfultidalwaveobject https://gofund.me/4de94fec

"We appreciate your help!" "As newcomers to Tumblr and GoFundMe, we are in desperate need of your kindness and support."'

mahmoudayyads https://gofund.me/31c5cbe3

"Our lives are harsh because we lack all the basic necessities of life. Everything has become scarce and unattainable. There is no food, no water, no medicine. So, I ask you to help me keep my family safe and alive, especially after we had lost all our sources of livelihood."

(Vetted by @90-ghost)

randasalem75 https://gofund.me/bbe291a5

"I am collecting such donations to provide the minimum basic needs of life and help find safety and peace for my family of 7, my wife, my young son Mohammed and my daughters Nour, an engineering student, Hala who got a high school average of 99.3% and because of the war of extermination she did not go to university, Farah, a high school student and Mays in the third year of middle school"

aboodalqedra-5 https://gofund.me/95360334

"Please donate a small amount that may save my father's life, only 32€ left to buy my father's treatment, his doctor's appointment is tomorrow, please do not ignore my message and do not hesitate to help me"

(Verified by: @gaza-evacuation-funds)

Reposting, Engaging, literally anything would be amazing for this!!

#rekin yapping #apersonsart #man im tired #anyway #FREE PALENSTINE #FREE GAZA #HELP THESE PEOPLE #GO DONATE #GO HELP #another thing in caps #palestine

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inolienkiki · 9 days ago

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ok longpost incoming, because I just came across something very psychologically interesting but which will require volumes of backstory to explain. aita vibes if you like that kind of thing, maybe I’ll even post an update later. buckle up

my family

So, my grandma (mom’s side) is emotionally abusive. She’s been like this her whole life, as far as we know. It’s really hard for me to explain how or why in a few sentences, because it’s so vast and widespread that it’s hard to encapsulate. So instead I’ll just list a bunch of stuff she did, in vaguely increasing order of severity

- never asks for anything, but is confident she deserves it anyway. Whenever I’d visit her as a kid, she’d ask if I wanted a drink. If I wasn’t thirsty, she would continue asking multiple times, which left me confused for years- before I realized she wanted me to get *her* one.

- similar to this, she recently let her cat’s nails grow out for probably over a month. She complained continuously about this, and passive-aggressively blamed my mom for not cutting them— *several times*— but she’d never asked.

- when she had a dog, would repeatedly fail to clean up it after it had been in my mom’s yard. Once my mom got chickens, she would repeatedly bother my mom about cleaning up after the chickens (which, by the way, is barely necessary unless it’s really dry out). My mom got her multiple tools and gadgets to make it easier for her to clean up, and would often do the job herself despite disliking dogs (she grew up with 4 massive untrained dogs which is a whole other problem but whatever). Mom tried to be very clear about how Grandma needed to treat *her* yard and yet Grandma never took up these responsibilities.

- this same yard has really complicated xeric landscaping that my parents spent years doing by themselves. She’s made repeated unsolicited criticisms and demands about what she thinks, again, *their yard* should look like. After years of this, my dad decided he would start only listening to her if she made direct requests. He’s not forcing her to say please, he just wants her to *ask*. As a result of this, she started trashing him behind his back to her sister, her friends, her ex-husband, me, etc. Took me years to figure out he’d had it right the whole time.

- is very overweight. Fine, whatever. Feels immensely sorry for herself and clearly believes her weight is a problem, but does nothing about it, which is the actual issue here. When I was like 12, I would “make deals” with her where I’d offer to do stuff (move things out of her house, watch stuff with her, etc.) in exchange for her losing weight. She encouraged this and agreed to the deals but never lost any weight. This led to me having multiple breakdowns and fights with my mom about how they weren’t doing enough to support or help her. Turned out they had offered multiple times to make *all of her meals FOR HER*, AND PAY FOR HER FOOD, and she’d said no. Last I checked, she still orders a tub of cool whip when my parents bring her groceries every week or so.

- Speaking of food, when I was a kid I was very active in this project which involved avoiding a particular and pervasive ingredient that shows up in a lot of food, especially snack food. It’s made by cheap, exploitative labor and is super destructive to the environment. I was so passionate about avoiding it that I gave up stuff like Nutella and Oreos when I was, like, 8. My parents did too in support. My grandma never did, which, fine- but she’d *pretend* to. Like, I would tell her a product was bad, and she’d say “ok I won’t buy it”, and then I would go back the next week and there it would be and she’d gaslight me into believing I’d never said anything. Again, I was 8, so I believed her (especially because she often used memory issues as an excuse).

- very unhealthy relationship with her ex-husband, who is your typical Crabby Guy With a Heart of Gold. From what I’m able to tell- I wasn’t there- she’d (maybe intentionally) provoke him, then spend the whole argument screaming, wailing, playing the victim, pulling my (teenage) mom into it, then refuse to speak to him for days at a time. This happened constantly for years at a time, traumatized my mom, and destroyed her relationship with her dad for actual decades.

- She still pulls my mom into unrelated arguments. This has held me hostage for years now. I want to cut contact, but if I do, she’ll make it my mom’s problem.

In short: traumatized my mom, parentified me, tried repeatedly to destroy multiple relationships in our family, and now lives off my family and her ex-husband’s alimony while complaining constantly and blaming them for helping her.

If you need any other reason to hate her at this point, she’s also a bigot, repeatedly uses the r-word despite me telling her how disrespectful it is (which she pretends not to remember ofc), misgenders several of my friends repeatedly after I’ve corrected her, complains about queer people “making this decision so early”. I can’t come out to her, because I’m scared to, and because she keeps (for lack of a better word) *shipping* me with a close male friend of mine- who’s also 6 years my senior. We’ve known each other since I was 13 so obviously he has no interest in me, and Oh Also I’m Aroace.

the situation

Right now my parents are out of town for my mom’s birthday. While they were gone, they asked my mom’s close friend Katie to watch the cat. Turns out there were some things we didn’t know about Katie. This weekend she started screaming at her daughter for unclear reasons, got drunk, drove to my parents’ house and hid there. She was there for 1 or 2 days- (this is all secondhand information)- drunk essentially the whole time and not caring for the cat. Her husband tried to get her out of the house, but she wouldn’t go. He came back later with the police, who did absolutely nothing of course- they didn’t even notify my parents, nor did they inform my grandma, who lives on the property and was watching the whole time. Eventually he and my parents agreed that she had to leave, so they made sure she did (again idk how). Katie’s husband told us this was not the first time something like this had happened, he’s looking at divorce proceedings, and her kids were reportedly distressed to hear she was coming home.

This was hard on my parents, because (a) they had to get their neighbor to watch the cat on short notice, except she’s busy with work and her own divorce, so she’s going to have to bring him to a cattery on Thursday, which my parents were overall not prepared for, and (b) what the hell, Katie.

(You may be wondering why my grandma was not available to take care of the cat. This is, of course, because climbing the 2 readily accessible front steps is too hard for her to bother. She needs a man to help her. Yes, she refuses to climb the stairs unless my dad is there.)

So, tonight I was on my weekly obligatory phone call with my grandma- again, can’t cut contact- and we were talking about this whole situation. Then she said something very interesting. Something to the effect of: “you see how this kind of stuff can happen to women?”

To which my response was, “…huh?” And I reminded her that Katie had been harassing her daughter and clearly had done this to her family before. I’m not very close friends with her daughter and son, but based on everything I’ve heard, they don’t get along with her real well. Now I know why. They’ve clearly been keeping this secret for years.

But my grandma was comparing this situation to her marriage, which she’d never told any of her friends was having problems. She saw herself in Katie, who had recently retired, and who was “having problems with her kids” (at least as my grandma saw it… her daughter is hyper-independent and her son is trans and chronically ill… and they’ve been in this situation for years… yeah, not their problem.)

And it was then that I realized my grandma views herself as a victim of abuse- but she thinks being drunk, irresponsible, and volatile… *is* abuse. She thinks Katie’s husband coming to find her, managing this situation for years, and now starting divorce proceedings, *is* abuse. And I think this finally solidified it for me that my grandma accepts no responsibility.

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goodhorse413 · 1 year ago

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Obligations, basilisks, and empathy

My last longpost about ethics was a big hit (lie), and I want to write another one to discuss another idea in ethics that bothers me, the concept of obligation.

Peter Singer's most famous essay is the one that argues that we all have an obligation to donate all of our money to help people in the third world except for the bare minimum. I read this essay in a philosophy class (which was at a college but I was in high school at the time, it's a long story and it doesn't matter), and the ensuing discussion about it was very interesting to me. I'm not sure what an "obligation" really is in the objective sense. Singer argues for the obligation through an example that provokes your intuition, that of a drowning child in front of you. As I said last post, I don't really like to rely on intuition for ethical philosophy. Intuition can be very misleading, as I'll argue later on in this post. A lot of people in the class argued whether or not donating all your disposable income to charity was actually morally superior to not doing so (it obviously is, you have to use incredibly motivated reasoning to argue otherwise), and a lot of people argued that obligations only existed up until a certain point, that point usually placed around exactly where they happened to want it to be.

I really do think that certain states of affairs are objectively better than others, and that it follows from that that certain actions are objectively more ethical than others, and in this sense I'm a moral realist. But I'm not sure where obligations come into play in any objective sense. Obviously you don't HAVE to do the right thing. The fact that people ever do the wrong thing proves this to be the case. But there's an extent to where this idea does in fact make sense, and that's in the fact that when people have information about a situation, they're a lot more likely to do the right thing.

Moral facts aren't really binding obligations, they're more like infohazards, or basilisks. They're pieces of information that, when you learn them, affect your decision making. Basilisks are very common. Suffering itself is a basilisk. It's a piece of information (in the form of qualia) that alters your behavior in a negatively reinforcing way. Joy is the reverse. What Singer is really trying to do is to introduce you to a basilisk (there are many people suffering in the third world whom you can help) in order to influence your behavior in a more ethical direction. Ethics can be seen as the study of true basilisks, basilisks made of true information rather than false information.

David Hume described empathy as the origin of morality. This is in my opinion not digging deeply enough. Sure, empathy is a process that causes humans to act ethically, but it isn't the bottom of ethics. The bottom of ethics is good-and-bad. Rules, rights, and obligations are second-order. They're social constructs built in service to good and in opposition to bad. Empathy is a natural, instinctive way of gathering relevant information about the emotional valencies of others. Feeling that someone else is suffering is a basilisk that causes you to act in a way that works to lessen that suffering. But this feeling isn't arbitrary. That feeling can be correct or incorrect, depending on whether or not that person is actually suffering.

Imagine that two men are looking at a tree. One thinks the tree is beautiful, the other thinks it is not. Neither of them is wrong. Beauty is something that exists within the conscious representation of objects, not within objects themselves. A tree can't be beautiful if nobody's looking at it. The image of the tree in the first person's head has the quality of beauty, and the image of the tree in the second person's head does not. Beauty is in this sense relative.

Now imagine that two men are looking at a sad little girl. One of them looks at the girl and feels empathetic towards her, feeling sad. The other one looks at the girl and feels gratified. She deserves it, he feels. He sees her sad face and feels happy. One of these impressions is correct and the other is not. She really is having a bad experience, even if you sense otherwise. Empathy is in this case transmitting true information to the first man. Her situation is bad, not good. The quality of her experience exists within her, not only within images of her. It still exists even if you can't see it. In this sense, morality is not relative. One of the basilisks is a piece of true information (something painful is happening over there) and the other is a piece of false information (something pleasurable is happening over there). Not all basilisks are equal, and reason is needed to distinguish moral truths from moral falsehoods, even though they might function in the same way.

Here's another example of why emotional intuition isn't sufficient for rational ethical behavior. Imagine that a man is walking down the street and encounters someone being raped. When he sees the rape occur, his empathy is activated, and he is horrified. His brain tells him something very awful is happening. He steps in and heroically stops the rapist and saves the victim. Now imagine that the same man walked into an art gallery and saw a painting of someone being raped. The image sets off his empathy, and his brain tells him something awful is happening. Outraged, he destroys the painting and tries to start a protest to get the art gallery shut down for hosting such an evil painting.

In both of these situations, he may come up with some post-hoc reason for his decision-making. His stated reasoning isn't very important. The real reason he made these decisions is because of his emotions. However, in one situation, his emotions told him the truth (that girl is suffering), and in the other, they lied to him (that painting is suffering). Ethical emotivism, sentimentalism, and other feels-based theories of morality can't draw a distinction between these two scenarios. They mix up the cause and effect of morality and empathy. It's important to step outside your own feelings and examine whether or not your intuitive assessment of a situation is correct or not, because intuitions mislead us in both directions all the time.

An important question to ask when discussing any moral question is whether or not you're saving a girl or an image, whether a moral injustice exists in the real world or just in your head. It means acknowledging the map-territory distinction, that things aren't always how they appear. Something that comes up a lot in discussions of morality is the difference in how society treats dogs and pigs. Why is it considered okay to be cruel to pigs, but monstrous to be cruel to dogs? Because people have different emotional responses to the incidents. You might see a plate of bacon and your brain will send positive signals, and you might see a dog getting beaten and your brain will send negative signals. Don't just try to post-hoc justify your brain's signals. Consider the reality of the situation. Think about the extent to which pigs and dogs can suffer. Think about what's best for them, and what's bad for them.

This is important in abortion too. A lot of abortion debate is trying to throw basilisks at people to try and alter their emotional reaction to abortion. But the important thing is the question of what the consequences are for the mother and the fetus. Maybe the death of a fetus is really shocking and appalling to you, but what is it like for the fetus? How does it feel? Does it even feel much of anything? How does the mother feel? What's gonna happen to her? What are the actual effects going to be? These are the actual relevant questions. Throwing around insults and shame-on-you's has never been a convincing strategy to me.

This is all to say that empathy is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and it sometimes might be better to shock and horrify yourself if your intuitions are misleading you. Also to say that obligation is a silly idea. You can do whatever you want, but there will be consequences, even if you can't see them.

#tw rape #from this and my last post on ethics I think you can reason out all of my specific ethical beliefs #so just extrapolate them and you'll know how I feel about such and such

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mandana-the-service-pup · 2 years ago

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My 2023 Review of PetsBest Pet Insurance + a few tips (LongPost)

Pet insurance will only reimburse payments that you have already made and this can take months. You will need to have a good savings account and/or credit limit to cover the costs up front. It’s rare to find a vet who will do a payment plan and it can be really stressful to have your ability to cover a large transaction during nonbusiness hours be the only thing stopping you from saving your pets life. So #1 apply for CareCredit ahead of time and if possible have a savings account and good credit limit for emergencies. Usually if the transaction is larger than $200 you can get a 6 months no-interest period with CareCredit. The limit is often determined by your credit score & income but the more you use it and pay it off the higher they will raise your CareCredit limit over time. As far as the amount is concerned I’ve seen people with CareCredit as low as $500 and as high as $10,000. Our starting offer was $2500 and was bumped up to $6000 after using it for over a year.

There are two main ways deductibles can work in pet insurance. Some companies have one deductible per annual period that you need to pay before receiving benefits. Others will have a deductible per incident and then anything related to that illness/injury in the future your deductible will have been paid already no matter the time period (which might not be good for accident prone dogs but is great for chronic illnesses) PetsBest does an annual limit that is customizable so it’s hard to give exact estimates but here is what it looks like for us: We pay $32/mo for Mandanas insurance for a 90% reimbursement level and supposedly unlimited annual limit. That $32 also includes the supplementary package for chiropractic/acupuncture/rehab (more on that later). We chose a $250 annual deductible that we have to meet by filing approved claims. So for every claim they first subtract what isn’t covered > then subtract the 10% “copay” >> then take that amount and subtract it from the $250 deductible >>> if the annual deductible is met then what’s left (90% of the approved expenses) is payed out in a check or via direct deposit. (It took us a little over a week to get our check).

Preexisting conditions is another thing that can vary in pet insurance. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to this. PetsBest doesn’t cover preexisting conditions but if your pet develops chronic issues they will continue to cover those expenses longterm as long as you don’t cancel your plan and start it over (as mentioned above you will still have to meet the deductible every year even if it’s the same issue). We recently got a large check for Mandanas elbow mass removal and the emergency visit that was related to that surgery. I asked how this would affect our future rates and PetsBest assured me they don’t change rates based on claims and payouts. (They have a super secret formula for how they change their annual rates which I think involves the pets age and other mystery variables. I guess we’ll see later this year if they raise our rates drastically after paying out)

They are in the business of making money and will use the fine print against you whenever possible. This goes for every claim you make but here is our specific example. As mentioned before, we chose to add on the chiro/acupuncture/rehab package and that has been our biggest disappointment (and as far as I know you can’t remove it from your plan without canceling and reapplying which is a big No No because every claim would now be considered preexisting!) For starters they will only cover these things if prescribed and performed by a licensed vet, so you are limited in that capacity even if the chiropractor works with your vet and comes highly recommended. The second issue is that they will only cover their definition of these therapies and that might not be what is used by your vet. My vet doesn’t do acupuncture in the strictest sense bc trying to convince a dog to stand still for 20 minutes with needles in their back is often more trouble than it’s worth. Like many vets nowadays, she uses aquapuncture which is saline/b vitamin injections into acupuncture points. It take about a minute to do all the injections and it has been one of the most effective treatments for Mandanas back issue. PetsBest doesn’t care what is best for the pet. They say they will only cover acupuncture or electro acupuncture (not acupoint, acupressure or aquapuncture). So if you are interested in various types of therapies be sure to read the fine print and not just what they will cover but specifically what they won’t cover because those are located in two different places in your policy. (Another note on this point that I’ve seen others experience is that they will try to claim everything they can is a side effect of the preexisting conditions. So if your dog has allergies as preexisting then they may try to say any skin issues, ear infections, diarrhea, UTIs ect from here on out are caused by the allergies and it doesn’t matter if that’s true or not. I haven’t personally experienced this yet but it does happen with every pet insurance company I’ve heard of so just be aware of that.)

Filing a claim is both easy & troublesome. All I have to do to file a claim is take a picture of the vet receipt and proof of payment (which would be the CareCredit receipt if that’s what was used). That picture is taken through the PetsBest app. I put the date the problem first started and a little description and then hit submit. In 35 days you should receive an email with a breakdown or what was covered and what wasn’t with a description next to each of why that decision was made. Recently they said it’s taking 42 days for claims to be processed, so that’s a decent chunk of time you have to manage a big transaction until you get reimbursed. If you file one claim and have other vet expenses come up before that claim has been processed go ahead and file those too. They will go over all of them in one session at the end of your waiting period and that will save you time in the long run.

The reason I say it’s also troublesome is because they have automated messages that talk about how your claim is delayed because of incomplete medical history due to lack of communication from your vet. I have a close relationship with my vet and that is absolutely false. When those emails are sent out I have been at my vets office and they haven’t even received the requests from PetsBest yet. Upon my request the staff will send the information via email to PetsBest and PetsBest will continue to say they haven’t received anything and that it can’t be processed. I have time-stamped emails from my vets office that proves otherwise and I’ve talked to PetsBest customer service who say they have the documents they need and to just ignore the email. As someone who struggles with healthcare related PTSD, this is really unacceptable. Vets and their staff are already taxed beyond belief due to the massive ratio of vets/pets in this country. To send out automated messages that discredit vet staff and encourage pet owners to put pressure on them is crazy. It quickly ruins the pet owner-vet relationship and for what? To make things slightly more convenient for the paid employees of PetsBest? So just know going into these claims, that they may actually need that paperwork but it’s better for you and your vet to call PetsBest as often as needed to confirm what they have on your account before turning that energy towards your vets office. (Also, when you call PetsBest you need to have your claim number available to type in even if you aren’t calling about a specific claim or it will be difficult to talk to a real person and you may get stuck in the automated call process or have your call dropped)

I know this is a long post, so I think I’ll wrap it up here. If you’ve made it this far then I hope you’ve found some of this information helpful. I don’t claim to be an expert on pet insurance. This is just my experience from having & using it over the course of the last year with a sick dog. I’m sure I will post more about it in the future when I’m able to offer more insights as to whether or not it’s worth it and if this is a good company to use✌️

#PetsBest #pet insurance #sick dog #injured dog #vetblr #dogblr #service dogblr #service dog community #service dog resources #dog recommendations

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kylekozmikdeluxo · 1 year ago

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Those Two Times BIONICLE and TOTAL DRAMA Came to My Rescue

#longpost likely incoming...

Some things have a weird significance in my life, whether it's stuff I genuinely enjoy or stuff I could just take or leave...

But, I just remembered something...

I was looking through some older videos of mine, and came across a few I did in the pit of the miserable summer that was mid-2020. And while watching these old videos to see what kind of editing I did, I was hit with intense flashbacks... Flashbacks that reminded me how confusing and scary those times were for me, amidst the pandemic and life seemingly not about to get better. Add to that, a lot of nationwide happenings, and seeing people around me devolve into parroting all the worst misinformation about the then-current political climate.

I had some other things going on at the time, too, that ranged from disheartening to outright terrifying... I'd say July/early August 2020 was where I had some serious anxiety attacks...

Conversely, I was uncorking a version of me that I kinda had suppressed through high school, and really dialed down during my weird snobby pseudo-adult college years. So, I was letting a wild unchained side of myself flourish again circa May-August 2020. I was writing and drawing and creating some wiiiiild stuff, stuff I hadn't genuinely enjoyed creating in a looooong while. I think a lot of this was due to not having to worry about a work schedule and other commitments, I was home all the time! So, I had all the time in the world to let my creativity flow like a dam had been burst.

And then meanwhile, all this unrest was going on, COVID was not lessening because people kept spreading it, misinfo was everywhere, TFG is king!!! The 2020 presidential election looming, threats of violence and voter suppression from the right- which eventually plateaued with the 1/6 attempted insurrection... And then there was something else that I won't specify, but something that was emotionally draining me and terrifying the fuck out of me around this time... To the point where I was worried I'd associate my weird wacko creative autistic side of myself with this very thing, and suppress it again out of fear... Reject it outright, even! But luckily, I closed off the problem and continued onward, I continued to write and draw the stuff I love to make...

But by mid-August of 2020, it was like I had made it out of a trip through some kind of hell. Battered and smashed, to borrow from the opening monologue of MAD MAX 2...

And around this time, I guess because I was in the mood for them or I was feeling kind of warm and cozy inside... I revisited two things I dig...

BIONICLE and TOTAL DRAMA...

Weirdly enough, I turned to both of those franchises when it came to bad periods in my life...

BIONICLE and I go way back. As in, when this very Lego line was first introduced in North America in the summer of 2001. My love affair with BIONICLE was a bit on and off afterwards. It was my whole jam throughout 2001, all the way into the fall/winter. (I got tons of Bonkle sets for my birthday and for Christmas.) Into early 2002 as well, I was writing fanfiction even. I was like "When I'm older, I'll make animated movies, and a BIONICLE movie will be one of them!" And I was writing that theoretical movie for some time!

(I still would LOVE to make animated movies, but right now, I'm putting my focus on making comics and graphic novels.)

Then I kinda put BIONICLE aside, and then got back into it, somewhat, in late 2002. When the Toa Nuva sets came out... I remember buying the new Gali Nuva set on my first-ever trip to New York City, got it at the FAO Schwartz!

Then I put the franchise aside, again... and then turned to it once more in late 2003... That was when... The first MOVIE came out. The direct-to-video Miramax release BIONICLE: MASK OF LIGHT... Plus, the arrival of many new sets: Takanuva, the Toa of Light. The Rahkshi. Plus, beasts like the Gukko bird and Pewku the crab. I bought the blue Rahkshi back then, and played around with the mini-CD that came with it. Back when PCs having a CD-ROM (!) drive was a big must... So, I was all about Bonkle again!

And in late 2003, I needed it... Because I was dealing with middle school pains (it was my first year), my paternal grandfather slowly dying after a stroke, various bullshit, and me just not being myself and having a lot of personal problems to work through. The franchise took a break after MASK OF LIGHT, and it later made its big return with the all-new prequel storyline set in a whole new location. That was in late 2004. Naturally, I was ready to go all-in: New movie, new characters, new sets, everything. But I'm getting ahead of myself here... BIONICLE, during the MASK OF LIGHT era, was like a warm blanket I could to turn to in late 2003. A special interest I could sink myself in. I was writing stories back then, too, so it naturally appealed to me with its colorful array of characters and its rich worldbuilding and lore. It's why all those BIONICLE Lore memes bring me so much joy. Other people were engulfed in this stuff, too!

Eventually, BIONICLE was off my radar by about late 2005 or so, as my brain drifted to other special interests.

So, enter 2008... I had finished sophomore year of high school in June 2008, an absolutely horrid semester for a multitude of reasons that I went over in other posts (particularly my 2-part post on my weird history with the MADAGASCAR movies), but... The short version? I was 15, depressed, feeling like I was the worst person, I was absolutely shook by a friendship turned sour and going on cutthroat message boards as my unrefined autistic self, I didn't have one of my close friends around to help me feel better about things, and my maternal grandfather was slowly dying after a disastrous hospital visit, I was getting wind that I wasn't straight and that horrified me... Yes, late 2007 going into early 2008 freakin' suuuuuucked.

(15 years later, the present... I'm openly queer. Please don't read that above sentence as me being upset that I'm not straight. I was back then because I was 15 and homophobia was rampant in its own peculiar way in 2008.)

And by summer 2008, there was a streak in me of sorts. That I aggressively wanted for things to get better, but the bad chemistry in my brain wasn't letting me- until I snapped out of it. (It also helped that this bummer mood was pissing off others around me, and some of them have HAD IT, and they sure let me know!) And by the end of August 2008... All those horrible, hateful, bad feelings... Were gone...

Yes folks, I remember when these things specifically happened... That's how my autistic analytical photographic memory works, for better or for worse...

So, around that time, a particular Canadian animated TV series had come to Cartoon Network in the United States... TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND.

Now, when I caught wind of this show, I was like... "Total Drama? DRAMA? What has Cartoon Network come too???"

I had kinda given up on Cartoon Network sometime in mid-2007, a little after their president at the time - Jim Samples - got fired for the AQUA TEEN movie scare involving LED lights of the Mooninites hung around Boston that were thought to be bombs placed by terrorists throughout the city. (Yes, this actually happened. The W. Bush/immediate post-9/11 era was a weeeeeird time.)

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, Cartoon Network after Samples left. I was uninterested by then, and kinda stupidly nostalgic for what the network was prior to 2006/07. I was definitely more into [adult swim] by then, for sure! But, once in a while I'd pop on CN in early 2008 and see things like... SKUNK FU? MR. MEN? JOHNNY TEST, I think? When I wanted to see reruns of, say, ED EDD N' EDDY or even something like FOSTER'S HOME FOR IMAGINARY FRIENDS. Keep in mind, this was during sick days... And CN mornings during sick home from school days were... Also weird... Heck, I think one of the things I randomly watched on CN during a sick day was that CGI GARFIELD movie where he and Odie go to the real world. When you're 15, depressed, bored, and whatnot, you end up watching unlikely shit.

Again, I went off track... It's what I do, sorry. I'm a tangenter, for sure. I probably lost you, if I did, I apologize! Anyways... So, I see these listings for this "Total Drama" show and I'm like... This is what it's come to, huh?

I had caught glimpses of it, and thought... What are these characters? They're all terrible stereotypes! Ironic, coming from an actual 15-year-old at the time... But then, for whatever reason, I put it on... It was the episode "X-treme Torture". The one where Heather's top gets ripped off by the tree branch, and they show her blurred breasts...

And I was like, "Wait? This is on CARTOON NETWORK and not ADULT SWIM???" I had also seen that it was rated TV-PG, rare for a CN show back in the day. I was used to their stuff being either TV-G or TV-Y7 (sometimes with an FV)... So, it was a surprise to me, and I was intrigued. What 15-year-old wouldn't be? So I watched more of it, and found myself quite enjoying it for its fun characters, weird humor, and... Well, I also had crushes on several of the contestants back then, too, haha. In true form, my favorite was probably Gwen, the goth girl. Yeah, I'm one of those sadsacks who always had a cliched love for goth gals. Loved goth gals then, and I love goth women now. It didn't begin with Gwen, for sure, but she was a major part of it all no less.

So, yeah, I really dug TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND. I even looked up uploads of the original Canadian version on YouTube at the time, to see all the cuss words we didn't get in the stinky states. (The butchering of Lindsay going off on Heather in 'That's Off The Chain' is a work of censorship that astounds me - in all the wrong ways - to this day.) I largely kept this love for the show secret, and eventually I kinda forgot about it over time. I didn't really check out TOTAL DRAMA ACTION much when it was airing in spring 2009-ish, the rest passed me by. I briefly checked out ALL-STARS for a bit. There's a new season that's been out... Only in Italy, apparently. "Short Run in Peru", haha.

But in mid-to-late 2008, I was all-in on TOTAL DRAMA...

And, I got back into BIONICLE around the fall of 2008! I didn't follow any of the new stuff, I strictly stuck to the 2001-2004 era BIONICLE stuff. Mata Nui era and early Metru Nui era. I rewatched the first two movies, and I had a blast. It was fun to dig out my old sets. (Which are now in my studio.)

...

So then, fast-forward... August 2020... Coincidentally...

For whatever reason, I decided to revisit TOTAL DRAMA ISLAND... And BIONICLE...

When I revisited TOTAL DRAMA, I was struck by just how genuinely funny and entertaining it was, how sharp the voice acting is (Christian Potenza in particular, like he's having a ball as Chris McLean), and I even found something to appreciate in its often-criticized art style. Its slow pace, the reality show format, how it parodies the genre and also embraces its most entertaining elements (making for what is perhaps the *best* reality show? Leave it to animation to make a genre I generally dislike into something enjoyable), the summer island vibes, its looseness... Like, there's something kinda cozy about it. Later seasons are a little faster and a little more hectic, I feel.

And when I was re-watching TDI, along with the cheesy direct-to-DVD BIONICLE movies, all felt right in the world circa August-September 2020ish. In a sort-of weird, maybe not nostalgic way, but in a cozy and comfortable way. One is a good vibes show, the other is a cool lore-packed action-adventure with colorful robots. They're both big hits with me, that's for sure.

Maybe I'll pop the lid off of both pretty soon... It's August 2023, and life's been rough for me once more... I moved out earlier this year, I'm trying to find a really good job (my work situation right now is kinda mixed), anti-LGBTQIA+ shit continuously brings me down as I grapple with being openly queer and having to deal with a good chunk of my family being very conservative, I have rent to pay now, and groceries too, and it's ahhhhhhh!

Maybe August is made for TOTAL DRAMA and BIONICLE...

Isn't it weird how life repeats certain verses and choruses?

#bionicle #total drama #personal post #random thoughts #anecdotes or whatever #autistic #autism #infodumping #infodump

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elden-hicks · 7 months ago

Text

the goths gameplay longpost

i had already played with them for 10-11ish days, but i am planning to play with them till the 30th day. the post is a bit long, so i hid a half of it under the cut.

so nothing really happened durning the first days, besides mortimer and bella having alex. and the burglar who broke into their house twice, hence the alarm at the entrance door. after he grew up into the child, they decided to throw a party.

the party was a banger, even drew carey came over (still have no idea who this guy is, lol)

mortimer's getting closer to his mad scientist seat

since the older goths were not at the alex's party, they came over the next day. grandpa gunther even brought some flowers for his grown grandkid :)

aaand the next day, they went to the magic town as a whole happy family. good times :)

mortimer and the kids had some fun there, while bella's been using her charms to befriend new people. literally.

thanks to bella's harassment skills magic aptitude, mortimer gets yet another promotion

she had already proven herself to be a powerful witch by beating the best duelist of the magic town for the gazillionth time.

meanwhile, mortimer gets into potion making at his private lab/bella's magic storage room. his lab emits lots of poisonous fumes into the atmosphere, but as it turns out, mrs. pleasant, their neighbor, doesn't mind this at all... my dansandra ass is in shambles.

well, at least he has a friend by himself now, meaning less ingredient scavenging and making that stupid friendship spell for bella. a clear win-win.

oh, great, they bought that wretched thing. be careful, bella.

turns out it wasn't bella who needed to be cautious. cassandra's been abducted, for, like, THREE times in a raw.

with that kind of dedication, i think it's time to make her a honorable curious brother or something... the worst part, besides her changed personality, is that her grades are plummeted now, cause she skipped the school a couple of times during her intergalactic adventures. her being literally abducted by the extraterrestrial civilization was not a valid reason for skipping classes according to the school's administration.

at least the school also allows her to improve her grades that way. she's truly stuck in the loop now.

bella decided to sell some homemade wines as her personal income. her business is doing good, but she still has a space to grow with her cooking skill, which is ironic, cause she won't cook a normal dish even to save her own life

she's a witch, after all, so she can cast the food right into the fridge whenever she wants :)

ah, good enough. at least the food was actually casted, so whatever. the fire was put down anyway.

by the 28th day mortimer had finally reached the top of the science career! yay! i'll wait till the weekends come, so i could organize them a vacation next time.

#ts1 #the sims 1 #sims 1 #mortimer goth #bella goth #cassandra goth #alexander goth

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poke-irs-real · 1 year ago

Note

✖ - a repressed memory. Tell us your secret memories @plasma-veracity

longpost incoming.

ZZZZZRT! ACCESSING MEMORY!!!

The memory begins. It is slightly fuzzy, but still, you can make out what happens.

A younger looking Intern stands in an alleyway. He looks like he can’t be much older than… what, 18? The smell of pizza fills the air.

This won’t be too hard. We steal a box of pizza, we get out of there, and we enjoy the first warm meal we’ve had in weeks, he thinks to himself.

The pizza shop was just around the corner. He just had to enter it and leave. It was simple. He looked inside the shop and spotted a box of pizza sitting on the counter. He looks around before entering.

He goes through the door, he walks up to the counter. He says nothing. Simple. He looks around. He takes the pizza. Simple. He walks out the door. So simple.

This part of the memory is crystal clear.

The person at the counter chases after him. They shout, “HEY! YOU DIDN’T PAY FOR THAT! COME BACK!” Not simple. Intern starts to run. They chase Intern for what seems to be… an unclear amount of time. The memory has faded out of focus.

The memory cuts.

Intern sits in a small apartment. He is eating the pizza like a wild dog. Absolutely shredding it. Like… on his hands and knees going feral on it.

The memory ends.

ZZZRT. HOLD ON, WE CAN’T END ON THIS. THIS IS HILARIOUS.

THERE’S. NOTHING ELSE. THAT WAS IT.

Sparkplug, I’m not sure how I felt with showing you that.

Look, I had to eat somehow.

#internposting #irl pokemon #pokeblr #pokemon #pokeblogging #rotomblr #pokemon irl #sparkplug the rotom

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a-god-in-ruins-rises · 1 year ago

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he’s at it again. dude is supposed to be an anglo-saxon pagan but he’s constantly simping for both normans and catholics. wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually converts.

longpost incoming. and i mean a /very/ longpost. i mean it. don’t keep reading unless you want to be assaulted by a wall of text. you’ve been warned.

anglo-saxon england was honestly a highly efficient administrative state. arguably i think it was the strongest european state outside of the mediterranean. but it wasn’t a top-down affair -- with the king and his earls unilaterally dictating policy to the rest of the realm unopposed -- like he’s suggesting. power /was/ stratified in the sense of it being distributed in different layers/levels. but the power was shared and flowed in both direction.

the king was “at the top” and then he did have a handful of ealdormen (they didn’t become known as earls until towards the end of the angl-saxon period). at most there were 25 ealdormen. usually there were about a dozen at any given time. these were powerful men in their own right. “ealdorman” wasn’t a hereditary noble title. it was more like a royal office. the king would appoint powerful noblemen as ealdormen. and the sons of ealdormen /were/ often appointed as replacements for their fathers which can give the illusion of it being hereditary but records are scarce and there are just as many records of ealdormen unrelated to their predecessors being appointed. the king could remove the appointment at will.

the actual powers of the ealdormen was fairly limited. they were basically overseers of local administration, making sure localities adhered to royal law, presided over shire courts, collected royal taxes, and commanded local militias. the title of “ealdorman” was more like an appointed office like royal governors or viceroys rather than a hereditary noble title. unlike later feudal nobles they couldn’t hold their own private courts. the authority they exercised as ealdormen was the king’s, not their own personal authority.

importantly, these ealdormen had their own interests as well. not only did they have their own lands but they were also probably somewhat concerned with the interests of your local “constituents” considering early anglo-saxon england was very tribal. you probably had some sense of kinship with even the commoners. i mean, we know even the kings at the time had some concern for their “people” so why wouldn’t ealdormen? especially considering ealdormen would be commonly interacting with ordinary freemen at shire courts. point is: there’s no reason to think that ealdormen were just robots enforcing the whims of the king. this is where the witan comes in.

the witan is a name for an assembly of the leading men of the realm. this includes, presumably (records are sparse), princes, ealdormen, thegns, and clergy. whenever a king wanted to pass some laws he would consult with his witan first and would discuss the matter with them. there’s no reason to think they just unquestionably obeyed. there must have been much discussion, debate, and compromise. consensus was the goal. and that’s part of what made the anglo-saxon so efficient. consensus. it’s a lot easier to get things done when everyone is in agreement. that’s what the witan was for. oh, you want to levy a realm-wide tax? well better invite all the powerful people in your realm and convince them to agree. otherwise you’re gonna be in some trouble. this fact alone should establish that the king wasn’t some absolutist monarch who could do as he pleased.

everyone knows what a prince or clergyman is and i just explained what an ealdorman is but what is a thegn? this is a matter of great debate but best i can tell it seems to have been a term for noblemen in general. ealdormen, when they weren’t ealdormen, were presumably thegns. it seems anyone could theoretically become a thegn by amassing enough wealth and prestige. there were different ranks of thegns. the most commonly attested are “royal thegns” who seem to simply be retainers of the king. they were often soldiers but i have seen references of clergymen as thegns. and there are also references to thegns having their own thegns. so i am inclined to believe that this was a very broad and loose term used to refer to a social rank, not some special hereditary title. probably just applied to any powerful person and their personal associates/retainers. again, it doesn’t seem to have been a strictly hereditary noble title with guarantees of certain privileges.

in some ways it seems informal and in others formal. for example, thegns are owed a greater “weregild” (a fine owed to them if one does them harm) than ordinary freemen. but beyond that i haven’t seen any evidence of special rights, except they /might/ be invited to the king’s court. it seems to more more of a social rank than a strictly legal one. but again, it’s hotly debated. there just isn’t enough information to say for certain.

so as we can see power was distributed between the king and his witan. but then he also had to reckon with the many local aristocracies and local governments. because those also existed. you have shires (which are then further divided into hundreds) which are largely governed on the day-to-day (or week-to-week really) by local courts/moots. these would be sort of assembly-like organs of the state probably composed of some mix of local leading freemen and thegns. additionally, there is the shire reeve (where we get the current term “sheriff” from) and he was basically the shire’s chief officer. honestly, not a lot is known about this position. we just know he had a lot of authority, not too far below that of the ealdorman’s.

but importantly, the shire reeve was probably elected. and he basically had the same duties of the ealdorman (just generally overseeing the shire and its courts and the distribution of justice and so on), particularly whenever the ealdorman was not present (which would have been pretty often since the ealdormen often had to oversee multiple shires and also probably often had to meet with the king). and shire-reeves and ealdormen probably saw each other as rival powers. at least on one occasion i know of an ealdorman who killed a shire reeve (for an undisclosed reasons) and was exiled for it. and i’ve also seen letters from kings writing to specific shires referring to the “shire’s witan” so we can assume that even localities had their own versions of leading men in some kind of assembly. perhaps the shire’s witan is just another term for the shire court? hard to say.

but as we can see the power was distributed at various levels and in various direction. local shire courts/moots and shire-reeves probably represented “the people” and their folkrights and their power moved from the bottom up. then we have the king and his ealdormen were represented the royal power which moved from the top down. and they met in the middle with the shire reeves and the ealdormen sharing many powers in the same jurisdictions. and then that’s not even accounting for informal power struggles. hot take: i might even say it was quasi-federal in organization. can’t prove it, but that’s my hunch. and obviously not like modern federalism. i just mean there was a strong central government that governed generally and broadly and then local governments largely governed themselves within the bounds of those general laws. it’s not a perfect representation of how it was but it’s close enough.

now as for the normans: as we can see, this dude is wrong about power being highly centralized until the normans came along and “distributed it.” that just isn’t true. power was already pretty broadly distributed. what the normans /did/ do is they distributed land. to the aristocracy. yes. that’s what they did. they brought feudalism into england. i mean, it was sorta already starting to creep into england but it really took over when the normans came in. sure, early on the normans nominally kept the shire courts but their power and jurisdiction was gradually eroded and replaced with royal (itinerant royal courts), lordly (private manorial courts), and ecclesiastical authorities.

just imagine if some foreign wealthy expat came in, replaced your government with himself, then took ownership of all your land, and become your new landlord. you could still live in your house but now you owed him rent, couldn’t sell your property (it’s his), had to work for his benefit, and you had to obey his rules. in anglo-saxon england freemen must have composed the vast majority of the population. but in norman england we see the freeman population drop to a mere 10% with most having become serfs.

norman and then the angevin monarchs that followed also ruled arbitrarily (by “vis et voluntas” or force and will ) and seemed to have already started imposing the idea of divine right of kings and that the king was above the law. this of course eventually led to the charter of rights and barons’ wars and the magna carta and parliament and the provisions of oxford, etc, which were attempts to assert the ancestral constitution and rights of englishmen, explicitly requiring “general consent” of the realm.

with regard to anglo-saxon kings and bloodline: oh boy.

so it’ll help if we break up anglo-saxon history into a few categores: (1.) early pagan anglo-saxons period. (2.) the early christian “core” period. (3.) then the later christian period.

1. early pagan anglo-saxons. we simply do not have enough information about this period. what little we do have is very sparse. but i think it’s safe to assume that they were somewhat similar to scandinavians and continental germans. probably tribal and their government was probably mostly based on assemblies of freemen and “nobles” (i’ve discussed this elsewhere but when i say nobles i don’t mean the type of hereditary noble titles we see in later fuedalism -- i just mean generally wealthy, powerful, and famous men) who would probably elect chieftains and kings. so we can imagine these tribal young germanic warriors crossing the sea, like proto-vikings, and conquering large swathes of britannia. the extent of these invasions are debatable. were they just mercenaries? small handfuls of mostly male warbands? entire tribal migrations? some combination? hard to say with certainty. but tribal territories were probably established and then aristocracies emerged and competed for “kingship” over said territories. the later “tribal hidage” document suggests a great number of smaller competing kingdoms/chiefdoms which only became consolidated into a handful of large kingdoms later on.

2. the early christian period. so anglo-saxons were already migrating and becoming established on the island of great britain by the 5th century. christianization didn’t really start until the 7th century where christianity began to spread rapidly through the elite. bede is our best source for this period and he was writing his “history” in the 8th century, completing it in 731. so while bede can probably be trusted to be pretty reliable for events happening in recent memory we have to be aware that there were a couple of centuries that preceded him which were pagan and illiterate. so we have to take what he says about these time periods with a pretty big grain of salt. so when he gives lists of kings’ lineages stretching back hundreds of years to pagan kings and then mythological figures....we have to assume he’s just kinda making shit up. or repeating shit he heard that other people made up. because there’s almost no way he could know that sort of information.

but what /can/ we say about anglo-saxon kingdoms at /this/ time? in this period, we do have /some/ evidence for /some/ kingdoms having /somewhat/ hereditary succession /sometimes/ (we can call these periods of pretty confident dynastic rule “core” periods). for other kingdoms it’s more questionable. but even this period of /roughly/ dynastic sucession in /some/ kingdoms occasionally had hiccups where usurpers with dubious ancestries occasionally and briefly took over. this period was also relatively brief. depending on the kingdom it lasted only about a hundred to two hundred years. which takes me to my next category.

3. the later christian period. now you might be surprised to here that as time goes on the records for these supposed dynasties become even more questionable. this is due to instability caused by viking invasions and civil wars. records for this period are relatively sparse and where they do exist they either tend to be contradictory or otherwise suspect.

for example, the last king of the mercian “core” dynastic period was ceolred. ceolred died young and apparently heirless. the man who succeeded him was aethelbald. aethelbald is supposed to be some conveniently /distant/ cousin but it’s highly questionable. the only connection i’ve seen is that the anglo-saxon chronicle mentions his father as “alweo.” no other information is known about this man except the anglo-saxon chronicle also mentions "alweo” was himself the son of an obscure king (possibly -- we’re not actually sure if he was king) named eowa. sounds kinda sus, right?

regardless, by the end of aethelbald’s reign the realm is being torn apart by constant war and rebellions. in the end, he was apparently murdered by his own bodyguards and then was succeeded by an unrelated thegn (remember those guys?). but this thegn’s rule was brief. he was himself overthrown and replaced by the great king offa. but offa is supposedly /another/ distant cousin of ceolred and aethelbald. in fact, apparently, he seems to share the same grandfather as aethelbald. that obscure maybe-king named eowa. but offa’s father? nothing is known about him except his name (thingfrith) and the fact that he was supposedly the son of this eowa. anyway, offa was succeeded by his son briefly before he died of an illness. but then /he/ was succeeded by a fellow named coenwulf. his ancestry is unknown. all we know is his father was named cuthbert and he was probably an ealdorman. no evidence he was related to the previous dynasty.

anyway, my point is, after this “core” dyanstic period things get a little dubious. there are a couple of early mentions of this eowa figure. but they both say he died in battle and make no mention of any children he had. and i know the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. so it’s certainly possible that these distant branches of these families were keeping record of some familial connection to this obscure maybe-king and no one seems to have mentioned it until they became king. but it’s also possible that eowa is just distant and obscure enough to easily fabricate a family relationship to the dynasty. i mean, the introduction of literacy to england must have been on par with the invention of the printing press in the way that it empowered the elite to spread propaganda and disseminate information. why wouldn’t these elites fabricate connections to kings in order to strengthen their claims? kings just distant enough that records of them would have been sparse and anyone within living memory of them would have been dead. just seems awfully convenient, no?

notes on anglo-saxon kingship: now let’s consider a few things. anglo-saxons are most closely related to continental germans (especially the saxons, obviously) and the norse (the jutes and angles came from the jutland peninsula). and what are some common features we find in all of these peoples: tribal organizations, government by local assemblies of freemen and nobles, kings are elected, etc. this all even squares pretty nicely with what we know from ancient roman sources about germanic people.

what we /don’t/ see much evidence for in these people is a preoccupation with hereditary kings or genealogical king-lists. at least, we don’t until the post-conversion periods. that’s when we get some of this in england and, later on (again, only after conversion), in scandinavia. the continental germans don’t seem to have ever developed anything like this. kings and emperors were famously almost always elected. now it wasn’t uncommon for a king’s/emperor’s child to succeed his father by election but this was not the same as a hereditary succession. this was more organic with the previous king using his wealth and power to influence electors to elect their son. but hereditary succession was not expected and was far from the rule.

the franks were unique in their very strong tradition of hereditary succession. and it’s worth noting that the kings of kent had very close relations with the franks. so this could possibly be how this tradition began seeping into england. but this is just speculation. it could have also developed in england independently. but i personally believe that christianity is largely responsible, in both francia and england. because while preoccupations with genealogy and king-lists aren’t very common in indo-european civilizations they were very common in the near east and the bible is well-known for it’s long-winded genealogies. and indeed, many early christians who commentated on kingship made references to king david and his royal lineage. this is also where we start seeing the idea of “divine right of kings” arise. another important factor would be the church’s role in crowning and anointing kings, emphasizing the biblical tradition. even to this day british monarchs are still anointed while recalling the anointing of solomon by the prophet nathan and the priest zadok.

final thoughts: obviously, i am under no impression that ancient anglo-saxons were some modern liberal representative democracy where the average freemen were electing representatives to the witan to elect their president (king). no. but the spirit of their tradition was closer to the aristocratic-egalitarian spirit of republicanism than the divine right hereditary absolutism and feudalism that came later. and yes, i am aware of the issues with the magna carta and that some good did come out of some of these post-conquest monarchs. i have more nuanced opinions about specific things. but right now i’m just painting a picture. weaving a broad narrative.

#i didn't proofread this #so apologies if there are any mistakes or anything incoherent

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