#mine. that is. my cognitive dissonance

[ardentpoop]

kendall thinks elon musk is a serviceable ideas man roman thinks elon musk is a bag of dicks hope this helps

[latracyde]

ugh gay people can't ever flirt normally 🙄

this is fanart for @punch-love of his fic love-punch, which you can read here :-) this scene is from chapter 2

(except i was too focused on drawing their suits to figure out how to convey their injuries. like wade's collapsed chest and broken legs. i couldn't wrap my head around what that would look like from over his suit >_>)

sketched on paper and colored digitally

[benetnvsch]

sigh- ok so ,,, some context if u want this to make sense,,, basically I saw this Bungo dog tweet earlier (Please watch it, nothing else will make sense if u don't , plus it is legitimately hilarious to me at least </3)

and just,, mmm had to draw kunikida from it because him ruining furry s0k0ku's family (?) and then being put in this outfit (???) fucking had me destroyed- good for him fkjsdhfkjh-

(i have very mixed feeling abt it overall so I may private it later but who knows ogughhhKDJHKDJ)

[indifferentcookie]

“what’s bad about being strange?” as i contrast this strangeness with a darker, more mysterious strangeness of which i hold an inherent dislike

[britishdisasters]

.

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

All of this to say I want Bienvenu's Talk with Conventionist G— pt 2. I want Hugo to say WITH HIS WHOLE CHEST that Nat Turner and Crew Did Nothing Wrong, and I want him to stand ten toes down on that.

We already know about Hugo's feelings on John Brown, an American abolitionist executed for role in the 1859 raid/rebellion at Harpers Ferry, but given that Nat Turner's rebellion occurred in 1831, I'm really curious

1) What Hugo's thoughts and feelings were (or would have been if he'd known about it) at that time, and

2) If the Amis would have taken notice, if they might have taken action (a la Hugo writing to the US government in an attempt to gain sympathy/a pardon for Brown), or if they would have continued focusing on exactly what's in front of them in France.

Besides Feuilly's Poland comment (in canin he is explicitly described as having adopted the world, so this is somewhat unsurprising coming from him), which does indicate some knowledge of politics outside of France's realm of direct influence, I'm not sure I recall any of the Amis ever discussing the current events of other countries. Even France's colonial holdings at that time e.g. Haiti I don't recall ever being explicitly referred to by the Amis. Does their mission extend to Paris, to France, to France and "her holdings," or the world?

[qqueenofhades]

I understand how important it is to be able to criticize the President, and am not at all of the belief he should be beyond critique, but the critiquing of Biden makes me so nervous. (That's not to say I agree with every decision he's made - I absolutely do not). But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it. I'm not sure if enough people have the ability to see that he's done things wrong but also is our only hope of staving off literal fascism.

So many people talk about how sick they are of it constantly being a lesser of two evils situation, constantly having to vote for a candidate they hate because the other side is worse (I heard it in 2020, 2022, etc), and I guess I just- I don't really get it? We're here because they didn't do that in 2016. All of this could've been avoided had the result been different then. I just feel like people don't comprehend how different of a place we'd be in if Hillary won and engage in all this cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about being part of the reason she didn't.

Like.... this has been a long-running topic of discussion on my blog, not least because it is so inexplicable and maddening. It also shows how terribly shallow most people's understanding of the American political process is, and how toxic the "I can only vote for a candidate if every single personal belief/position of theirs matches mine" belief is, as well as how much damage it has done to American democracy even (and indeed, especially) by people who technically don't identify as right-wing. Yell at Republicans all you like (God knows I do, because they're the worst people on earth) but they vote. Every time. Every election. Every candidate. Whereas the Democratic electorate still holds out for Mister Perfect, and it very definitely is Mister Perfect. The amount of "evil HRC!!!" Republican-poisoned Kool-Aid that so-called progressives drank in 2016, and then afterward when they insisted they could have voted for someone like Elizabeth Warren and then didn't do that in 2020, is... baffing.

Frankly, I don't care if Hillary Clinton's personal positions on XYZ issue were the most Neoliberal Corporate Centrist Shill to Ever Shill (and Online Leftists' intellectual skills being what they are, I seriously doubt that they were using any of those words correctly and/or accurately). American policy is not made by "personal dictate of the ruler," or at least it shouldn't be, because we are not an absolute monarchy. We rely on the operation of a system with input from many people. As such, if Hillary had been elected, we would have 2-3 new liberal justices on SCOTUS and have secured civil and environmental rights for the next generation. Roe would be intact, and all the other terrible rulings that SCOTUS has recently handed down wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have had January 6th, the attempt to stage a coup, all the tawdry scandals, our national security being at risk because of Trump stealing classified documents and probably selling them to Russia and/or Saudi Arabia, etc etc. If you think that's in any way an equivalent amount of evil to what would have happened if Hillary was elected, or if she was "still evil!!!," then I honestly don't know what to tell you. She could fucking murder puppies in her spare time if she had preserved SCOTUS for us, WHICH SHE WOULD HAVE, BECAUSE SHE WARNED US EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

(Hoo. Sorry. Still steamed. 2016 war flashbacks, again.)

In short, Hillary would have been a solid continuity Democrat and she would have signed whatever legislation a Democratic House and Senate passed, not to mention been hugely inspiring as the first female president. But because it's so important to the Online Leftists' moral sense of themselves that BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME!!!, they can't possibly acknowledge that ever being a factor, and/or admit that they have any culpability in not voting for her in 2016. It's like when you read the British press about any of the UK's equally numerous problems, and they BEND OVER BACKWARD to avoid mentioning that Brexit might be a factor. They just can't mention it, because then that means they might have made the wrong choice in pulling for it as hard as they did, and blah blah Sovereignty.

Basically, if HRC had been elected president, everything would be so much less terrible and terrifying all the time, we would be talking about her successor in 2024 as someone else who could be the "first," we could explore handing the reins over to Kamala as a Black/Asian woman, we could promote Buttigieg as the first gay president, etc etc. But because 2016 was so catastrophically fucked up, we are in damage control mode for the immediate future and every election is just as pivotal. And yet, because people think that the only thing that matters is a presidential candidate's personal views, we're stuck having the same old arguments and desperately begging people over and over to please vote against fascism, since that somehow isn't self-evident enough on its own. Yikes on Bikes.

[actual-changeling]

this one is thanks to a post by @thegroovyfool because she is very much correct - we do not talk about aziraphale's "i need you" enough.

so once again, with a deep breath and a sigh, welcome back to alex's unhinged meta corner, where i tear apart the confession scene frame by frame. i'm gonna say, watching this particular clip over and over and focusing on aziraphale's face almost took me out.

let's get into it.

first, how about a little look at our starting point. (any blurry screencaps are due to a LOT of movement on michael's part rip)

crowley is very pointedly facing away from him, he turned after aziraphale said "we can be together - angels!", presumably because being offered exactly what he wants in the one way he cannot have it fried his brain, cause besties it surely fried mine.

aziraphale on the other hand looks openly desperate, which is why he says "i need you." more on that later. let's have a look at how he says it, because michael "microexpressions" sheen is putting in the work.

to me, he seems close to tears, his eyes are glistening in that specific "i'm about to cry my eyes out" way i know from looking in the mirror while crying

he is trying to get crowley to listen to him and to turn around. he wants crowley to face him, which is something most people tend to want during an argument. talking to someone who is not looking at you tends to make someone frustrated and like they're not hearing you/do not care about what you have to say.

aziraphale looks close to despair, his i need you is a plea to crowley to come with him. he is opening himself up not just emotionally but physically, too.

he slightly leans forward, his arms are raised and seem to both slightly grasp for crowley and point towards his chest/heart for emphasis. the pure pain visible on his face knocks the air out of me every single time i look at it.

aziraphale is admitting to needing him, something he has never done before, hell, he has told him the exact opposite on numerous occasions. i don't need you. and while they both knew it was a) a lie and b) a way for him to deal with his conflicting emotional standpoints and cognitive dissonance, it still hurt crowley every. single time.

crowley was there for him no matter what, he knows aziraphale needs him but he came back and remained at his side even when he was pushed away and more or less openly insulted. he endured it all.

aziraphale saying i need you now is pretty much a slap in the face but also what crowley needs to hear. as with everything that happens during the entire conversation, the timing is fucked up and they're talking past each other.

in my opinion, that is why crowley does not react.

only when aziraphale turns spiteful and starts questioning his understanding (aka calling him stupid without outright saying it) does he re-enter the conversation.

aziraphale, however, is upset. now, i will put on my tinhat for just a second and turn up the insanity because there are two more things i want to talk about.

first, the little stutter at the beginning.

"i ngk - i need you."

my question is - why? why does he stumble over these words in particular when it does not happen with any other sentence? the only other time is right after crowley walks away with his "good luck", he stumbles over crowley's name.

so, in short, it happens when he is either caught off-guard or saying something incredible emotional.

and this, everyone, is where i go unhinged in my interpretation.

what if he initially did not want to say "i need you?" what if he was so caught up in getting crowley to stay/come with him that he did not think and almost confessed another three word sentence?

what if he was about to say "i love you" but stopped himself because no, that's too direct, they don't do that, they can't do that. it goes against EVERYTHING they have silently build over the last six thousand years. so he chokes on it. he chokes on it and instead he says "i need you" because it means the same thing.

i need you. don't leave me. come with me. be an us. go off together.

i forgive you. i love you.

they say it over and over again because that's the only way they can say it.

that is why aziraphale is so angry and upset after saying it. he told crowley he loves him, he needs him, and all he got in return was silence.

the funny part is that this code may have worked before, but it no longer does. crowley is too hurt to listen to what aziraphale is trying to tell him, and aziraphale is equally as hurt and also not listening anymore.

the funny part is that it stopped being about love and started being about sides again. my side, your side, our side. choose a side, choose our side, choose me.

the funny part is that beelzebub and gabriel told them what they need to do, i found something that mattered more to me than choosing sides.

[ot3]

friend of mine sent these tweets to the groupchat this morning and i have not been able to stop thinking about it for house. the underpaid labor of chinese factory workers is an acceptable accessibility tool but generative AI isn't??? i really can't wrap my mind around the cognitive dissonance here. i guess it's because chinese factory workers are not artists, so it doesn't matter if their labor is used by a third party to extract profit. but since the labor of other artists is the thing that provides value to generative ai that's unacceptable. it's natural for artists to be able to systemically profit off of the work of ~uncreatives~ but if technological advancements allow Artistry to be mass produced in a way that allows non-artists access the potential capacity to profit off of other people's creative labor that's taking it a step too far. i just can't understand this mindset where artists are a special group of people whose work is uniquely valuable. it's really gross.

[jensenscomedyelbows]

edit by the amazing and talented and generous @lemondropsonice

SPN FIC REC FEST #11

All-Time Favorites/Free Recs

The only pairing is Wincest

Most are explicit, but those that aren’t are marked accordingly.

THE FIREFLY THAT LOVED METALLICA by fleshflutter

Rated R, but WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH/RESURRECTION. I passionately adore this indescribably poignant story. Get tissues.

LIKE STARING INTO THE SUN by nyxocity

It was never about the girls. It was about them.

A new OFC in each part, until there are no more FCs at all and it’s just them.

There is also a sequel, linked to the original

RUN IT ALL OVER (THE WEST SERIES) by runawaydr3amer

I LOVE this series with a passion not too dissimilar from Sam and Dean’s for each other

When you live a life like theirs, chasing tail isn't always an option. But sometimes you just want someone to touch your dick, and your brother’s hand is as good as any.

THE LAST OUTPOST OF ALL THAT IS by gekizetsu

I’m sure this will end up on multiple lists during this event, as it’s a fandom classic that everyone loves. I don’t even want to try to describe it. 60K words. Casefic. First time. I think there’s some H/C. Beautiful. So so sad. Joy amidst the wreckage and heartache. I love it so much I should probably get the title tattooed on my body somewhere

NOT FOR SAMSON IN THE TEMPLE by maygra-fic

Coda to my all time favorite, see above. You have to read that one first to truly appreciate how this coda maintains the tone, voice, and prose quality. You feel like it’s from the same author, but surprise! it’s not, and that’s remarkable. Mature Sam and Dean. Elderly Sam and Dean

THE GHOST OF SOMEBODY AT HIS SIDE by runedgirl

Prepare to weep. When I need pain, this one guarantees I’ll get it. Author Description: The night before Sam Winchester meets with his 12th grade guidance counselor for the second time, something very bad happens. One of those somethings that takes only a ridiculously short amount of time – in this case, about three minutes – yet manages to change the course of two lives forever. Or: Sam goes to Stanford, and takes most of Dean's heart with him.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE by Morgan

This one just…stuck with me. The events that unfold are awful for Dean in particular, but I’m sure it wasn’t a great time for Sam, either. Bobby makes an appearance. Angst for daaaaays, and NON CON/DUB CON warning is red-flag-level. Author Description: Sam loses his mind. It's that simple. Dean doesn't know what to do, but he's not going to walk away from this, he's never backed down in all his life. If you're looking for happy endings, don't come here. This shit is dark.

THE SILENCE OF A SUMMER DAY by wanttobeatree

***Everyone who loves the Winchesters should read this amazing future fic***

Rated PG. The world has moved on. This is their legacy. Haha, yes, of course I’m recommending this one again. No sex whatsoever! Weird, right?!?!

@spnficrecfest

RESTRAINT by DarkEmeralds

Free rec. Rated M. 200k+ words. It's not Spn or Wincest or even J2, not really. I guess it’s technically a J2 AU. I’m sneaking it in here because it’s an all-time favorite of mine. This might not be your cup of tea, fanfic wise. I certainly didn’t think it was mine. But but but…it’s absolutely lovely, it’s extremely well-written, the tone/voice/verbiage is accurate for its time, and it has a happy ending that made me cry HAPPY tears when I was finished. If you like historical romance, you’ll like this. It’s set in Regency England! Author Description: The calling card said Tristan Jarrett, Viscount Penrith. Beneath that, in a lazy scrawl, was the addendum Mr Acklebury, be so good as to wait on me tomorrow, number 10, Half Moon Street. Yours, &c., Penrith. Mr Acklebury was not sure how he felt about being thus summarily commanded to paint his lordship's portrait.

[doriandrifting]

Uhm I don’t know how to break it to some of y’all but Noah’s last post was asking people to stand with Israel before he went ghost on social media. In the wake of what happened, I gave him the benefit of the doubt with that post. But I was scrolling through my fyp and saw literal dead Palestinian bodies and the next video was his return to social media with a smoothie ad where he is manually deleting comments including mine voicing how fed I up I was watching that bullshit. Not because I have some parasocial relationship or because I’m disappointed. Just because I refuse to have cognitive dissonance about this.

Like I’m not gonna tell people how to feel or judge anyone for seeing this differently, but I really need y’all to extend that same principle to those of us who literally just think that is some utter fuck shit. Because I do. I’m watching Israeli soldiers doing Tiktok dance trends on my fyp. A sponsored smoothie ad filmed by a millionaire in his mansion amongst videos of genocide after he posted pro-Israel propaganda and leaves up lies about beheaded babies for his millions of followers. All the while I’m sitting at my regular ass job debating putting a bus ticket to Washington D.C. on my credit card so I can go protest because there are people being slaughtered with my tax dollars. I don’t hate Noah Schnapp, but please don’t ask me to care about him right now.

[onefleshonepod]

ID: A digital collage of "The High Priestess” tarot card as the Body from the Locked Tomb series. The card depicts the Body as a ghostly figure with both arms raised, dressed in a diaphanous blue-white robe, standing on a large crescent. In her left hand is a sword. In her right hand is a scroll. She is crowned with the headdress of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, a red sun disc with cow horns. At the top is another representation of the Body reaching out of a river, from Mermaids by Arthur Rackham. In the background is the Bird and Pomegranate pattern by William Morris. Behind that, providing the abstract landscape, is Avignon by Ralph Hotere, an influential Māori artist. The image of the Body is from Allegory with a Woman by Luděk Marold. The left side of the card shows the upright meaning of The High Priestess and reads, “Inner Voice | Unconscious | Intuition | Mystery | Spiritual Insight in all caps. The right side of the card shows the reversed reading and reads “Repressed Feelings | Secrets | Hidden Motives | Cognitive Dissonance” in all caps. The base of the card reads "The High Priestess | The Body” in a retro 1970s-style font.

My goal with these tarot cards was to choose characters who embody the meanings of the cards when you think of them, to make the cards intuitive to grasp for Locked Tomb fans who might not be very familiar with tarot. Discussion below:

The Body haunting Harrow is quite literally an inner voice and a representation of Harrow’s subconscious. She’s the perfect figure for the High Priestess card. It’s hard to represent spiritual insight better than with. well. um. a spirit who is a religious figure who also provides insights. The nature of the Body is also one of the central mysteries of Harrow the Ninth.

Regarding the reversed meanings, the Body is also emblematic of Harrow’s secret which is hidden even from herself. My personal interpretation (along with many others') is that Harrow sublimated her forgotten and repressed feelings for Gideon onto the Body throughout Harrow the Ninth.

With my visual interpretation of this card, I tried to preserve or nod to some elements of the Rider-Waite-Smith High Priestess card. As a disclaimer, the hodge-podge orientalist imagery of the RWS deck is a shameful product of its time, but the illustrations are iconic and well known, so I wanted to acknowledge them. I also wanted to use images which evoked the dark wet ghost imagery of pre-Nona art and fanon of the Body.

The RWS High Priestess, and mine, presides over two pillars, representing the balance between them. The RWS pillars can be seen as multiple different dualities (such as good and evil), but are often called are the Pillar of Establishment and the Pillar of Strength. I interpreted the left side (with the scroll) as Harrow’s path of completing the process of Lyctorhood and becoming a fully functional tool of the empire. The right side, where the Body is holding a sword, represents Wake, Gideon, and the path of heresy. Just as the High Priestess’ role is to mediate between the two extremes, the Body’s role seems to be to help Harrow on her own chosen path.

The crescent moon at the Body’s feet, in the same place as in the RWS card, is seen also in many depictions of the Virgin Mary. This is meaningful because (as has been more thoroughly discussed elsewhere) the Ninth House’s worship of the Body and the way this is viewed as heretical and idolatrous by the other Houses can be seen as a parallel to Catholics’ veneration of Mary. I tried to continue the Marian imagery from the RWS card with a subtle blue tint to the figure’s robes.

The pomegranates in the background, also a detail preserved from the RWS card, are a symbol of — well, what aren’t they a symbol of. Many things that resonate in the Locked Tomb series. Death, eternal life, Hell, being torn between two realities… I used the William Morris pomegranates because I love his prints.

Finally, the RWS High Priestess wears the headdress of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, which I kept specifically because the cow horns are perfect: the Body being the Earth and wearing the symbol of John’s first transgression against the Earth while also trying to save it. Hathor’s domain was to help souls transition to the afterlife, and she was often depicted as a cow.

[definitelynotshouting]

Holaaa I love ur hunger AU- I was reading the master post in regards to it and I immediately got the delicious question, does Grian ever get impostor syndrome?? I'm not done reading it so I'm not entirely sure if this has been touched on, but one of my first thoughts was how people call Xisuma grians watcher name, and how he kinda rebranded himself to mask as a player - but in your AU it would be like more literal?

Let me start over my brains getting away from me jkhjvghbjkj BUT since he's an artificial watcher and he was kind of "created" via parasitic takeover, would he ever have a body horror impostor syndrome uncanny valley moment? That feeling of "this body isn't mine" even though it technically *is* his, he's been living in it, he has all Grian's memories, he wears Grian's face, relatively speaking everything about him screams that Grian is him, his identity his name his body - but ever since becoming a watcher he feels like what if he isn't Grian? What if the real Grian *died* upon pupation and whatever he is now just *thinks* he's Grian.

Kinda like Fern from adventure time! A delicious thing for my mind to rotate >:]]]]

A bit late on answering this so you've probably already seen it by now, but yes Grian has MAD imposter syndrome, and thats a theme that will be carried on throughout the entire fic :]]] if you've ever played the horror game SOMA, thats where i got the inspiration for the Watchers copying Grian's memory code into the body of a Watcher larva.

Grian experiences a lot of cognitive dissonance about what happened to him in the fic, and what it means for him as a person now-- part of his current coping mechanism is to say he ISNT the real Grian, but its not that cut and dry. I dont want to spoil things too much, but that idea is smth thats going to be explored really closely as a main theme of the fic once we get out of Arc 1

[idonotbitemythumbatyou]

Hi!! I just saw ur post about garak liking shakespeare, and since i too love shakespeare, i must know: what is his favorite play??

~ @dia-tou-amphistomou

This is such a great question and I'm going to give Garak the gift of my favorite Shakespeare play: Richard III

Richard is one of the greatest villain protagonists ever written. He is gleefully ruthless, effortlessly manipulative, and a magnificent liar. I think Garak would enjoy the ride of his rise to power, and then feel an uncomfortable pang of recognition towards the end as Richard grapples with his own evil and cognitive dissonance.

If called to discuss the play, Garak would have a difficult time selling his disdain for the play and might make his complaints that there was no reasonable explanation for Richard's defeat in the end. But I don't think this is a play that ever came up in the book club, because I don't think Julian is familiar with it.

Here's one of my top five speeches in all of Shakespeare; on the eve of an important battle, Richard awakens from a nightmare (Emphasis mine.)

It is now dead midnight. Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? myself? there's none else by: Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am: Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why: Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good That I myself have done unto myself? O, no! alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself! I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter. My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain.

[privateenemy]

the concept of transandrophobia (distinctly talking about the way that the fear of men or masculinity, however you view that, affects trans men and other people who exhibit transgender masculinity) is so interesting to me and the audience is groups of intellectually incurious people who failed to make a

and so what's the most interesting thing about it to me currently is how internalized transandrophobia affects the transgender relationship to manhood. Like if your life once revolved around being wary of men, as mine and many other peoples lives did, what does it mean for you to become a man? I'm not out to family, but as I grow and I guess exhibit trans masculinity, they've explicitly told me I look like my dad, I smell like my dad, I sound like my dad.

And that's a man I obviously don't want to emulate. Which is maybe a very literal interpretation of this. Even if they don't know it yet, I am more like him. My family is all women. All women with some relationship to femininity, which I don't have at all. I stick out like a sore thumb, I'm obviously and blatantly excluded from the family nucleus (a weird, sole electron). But I've always wondered, can you blame them? I don't think so. I lived in fear of that man for sixteen years. My heartbeat picks up at the sight of the NIssan car dealership. My sister tells me she's glad that we're a house of women who can depend on ourselves. She says she'll never let a man into her house.

Being "more male" would make me happier as a person. But it's this negotiation. Maybe this is hyper-specific. If I were to lean into this fully, I would scare my family. If I didnt actively try to sound like a girl, if I didn't commiserate about womanhood.

These are real and valid experiences of my family. If I was a woman, even if I loved men, there would be no incongruence. The statement "I hate men" does not upset me as much as frustrates me that it either excludes me on the basis of something I'm perceived to be ("woman-like") or includes me based on a generalization about experiences I share with them ("men will never have to be scared of..."). The fear and, sure, hatred / aversion to, men is so difficult to contend with as a transgender male because it's not irrational, but reconciling it with your identity and experience is a mess.

I just think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance to be (attempting to) understand misogyny, how it's affected your life, given medicine that harms you. If nobody around you is wrong. I'm incoherent now, not saving this as my 72nd draft

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Welcome New Followers Post xiv

gonna make this bullet points of Things to Know because deadlines, but hi! welcome!

-this is not a jewish identity or a jumblr blog. i am a jewish person and a holocaust historian, so my content often overlaps with those realms of tumblr

-this is first and foremost a public history blog. public history and public historians do history for the public. we're passionate about transmitting complex historical topics from the academe to the people, and we're in constant (one-sided lmao) conversation with entities such as: film writers and producers, textbook writers, government bodies, journalists, etc regarding the construction of public memory, and the responsibilities that entails

-you don't have to ask if something is ok to reblog. I appreciate the thought, but unless I turn off reblogs or specifically ask people not to engage in certain ways, you're fine, that said:

-I do see and read all tags, replies, and rbs. I consider them public, and I often respond to them as new posts. If you want to engage with me and don't want others to see, then send me an ask which includes the words "please respond privately"

-You can should disagree with me and tell me when you think I'm wrong! Now, I won't lie, years of existing as a young-appearing hyper feminine (i like skirts and bows and sparkly shoes it is what it is) female, Jewish historian have made me defensive and bitey af, and I often misread neutral tones as "coming for me" tones and respond in kind. I apologize for when/if that happens to you, and I assure that, once I realize you're not coming at me in bad faith, I will feel horribly guilty.

-There is a learning curve here. I don't have any desire to gatekeep my blog (it's the opposite tbh), but I do use high level terms which can have multiple meanings in different contexts. I actively try to avoid using impenetrable academic jargon in this space, but sometimes that jargon is the only appropriate phrasing available. In those cases, I urge you to do some research and poke around and then, if you still don't understand what I mean, DM me.

-I am a white, American woman. I am actively anti-racist, and anti-bigotry in general, but there will be times when I do or say something clueless or privileged. If you see that and you have the energy, please tell me! I want this blog to be a welcome place for all,* and I appreciate call-outs as an opportunity for (un)learning.

-Building on that, this is an anti-bigotry space which I'd like people of all demographics and identities to feel comfortable engaging with.* That said, I don't play nice when some random corner of tumblr rolls up in here and barfs their shit all over my posts.

-I am a cringe millennial. I started this blog in 2011, when I was 21, had just finished college, before I'd heard back from any graduate schools, and before I had much resembling a career. I am currently 34. It's fine. But a lot of you are in your teens and 20s and are just starting on your careers, so like, please don't negatively compare yourselves to me or get self-deprecating when/if you want to contact me. We all learn and achieve at different paces and that's ok.

-My book, The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto, will be released in Fall 2025. Trust me I will be screaming from the rooftops and you will not miss the announcements lmao.

-If I don't reply to an ask or a DM, it's not because I hate you. There are 800 reasons why I may not reply, and none of them are personal.

and finally

-I am not your Good Leftist Anti-Zionist Jew. I am not here as a rhetorical cudgel for left-wing anti-Semites who seek out Jews with politics similar to mine to then use as a weapon against other Jewish folks. Don't fucking do it.

*That does not mean that everything I post here will make you feel comfortable. History isn't supposed to make you feel comfortable. Sometimes, it can and should make you feel actively uncomfortable, because that discomfort/cognitive dissonance means you're learning (keep your cognitive dissonance temper tantrums tf away from me, tho). It does mean that I, as an individual, want you all to feel that this is a space where you are welcome to learn and ask questions.

i tried to use bullet points to keep this short, and i failed miserably. on brand.