#se defender

[my-ten-thousand-promises]

[annalegend]

[hedgehog-moss]

forgive me for the possibly foolish question, but what kind of care do the fish in the aquaponics require? do you have to feed them to a certain point where the plants then supply their diet, or do you continuously care for them? merci! i love your blog 🌱

The plants don't feed the fish, it's the other way around :) The plants use the fish poop as natural fertiliser (with the help of useful bacteria that break it down), and in doing so they clean the water for the fish. Here's a little diagram

Since my system has towers over the fish tank rather than grow beds, the fish do nibble on the plant roots that dip in the water but that's just an illegal snack, fish food is their main diet. Also when I find little insects on the plants, I shake them so the insect falls in the water where the fish give it an enthusiastic welcome. Some aquaponic gardeners farm insects to feed their fish (and they feed the insects with some of the plants so they have a complete symbiotic system) but I haven't tried that yet. I used to successfully breed dynasties of stick insects in a terrarium in my bedroom as a kid, so maybe someday.

The fish part of the aquaponic system is very low-maintenance—I don't clean the tank since the plants absorb the fish waste, I just have to adjust how much I feed the fish depending on how many plants there are, so the water doesn't get dirty, it's a bit of a balancing act. The main other thing to watch for is the water pH, for plants it should be around 6 or 6.5 (ideally) and for fish around 7 or 7.5, so I try to keep it between 6.5 and 7 to keep everyone reasonably happy. Rainwater has a lower pH and my spring has a higher one, so when I fill up my watering can in the tank to water outside plants, I look at the pH meter and top up the tank with rain or spring water depending on what's needed.

You just have to be careful not to pick up a hitchhiker fish in your watering can as you go to water other plants!

[otrtbs]

Hi I hope you're doing well 🌷

I had a question. I'm totally asking out of pure curiosity, it's not a criticism or anything of the sort.

In ahb (this masterpiece of yours) Sirius's favorite painting is Degas' Dancers.

I wanted to know if you knew the background of this painting and if making it Sirius' favorite was a deliberate choice or if you had no idea at all.

Because the Ballerinas in Opera Garnier in Paris were all really young and mostly, they were poor. The dancers were often their family's hope to crawl out of misery.

The audience was full of men.

In fact, the sad flip side was that there was a whole prostitution network behind the scene. With these young girls. Men could pay for backstage access to watch ballerinas change and sometimes rape them.

So Degas was a big customer.

That's how he painted the dancers and most of his works.

That's again how he sculpted the ballerina, her tutu was added meaning the 14 year old girl was posing nude.

Degas is also suspected of being Jack the Ripper, there are a certain number of credible leads and potential evidences.

That's why I was wondering if you knew.

Since there is this whole chapter where they insult Picasso (as they should) I found it strange that Degas being a known major p*do did not receive the same treatment.

Ps: I'm french, I don't know if I made any mistakes writing this, if I have please excuse me I tried my best 🙏

Okay hi, hello! I am doing well and I hope you are as well! You have unlocked Art Historian Thesis Nat, so I am going to put an extremely lengthy post under the cut, I'm so sorry (this is literally my area of study,,, i fear i am incapable of being brief about this)

I do want to clarify that right off the bat, I don't necessarily think many of these art historical figures are "good people". Like none of them are the best, most moral, upstanding citizens you should model your life after (but they're also dead sooooo). But I also understand that I did take some time in my fanfiction to make my hatred for Picasso very clear, and so I can also understand the confusion in not extending that same hatred towards Degas. But there are a few reasons for that, that I'll try to explain below!

The direct historical documentation of Pablo Picasso's violence towards the women in his life is vast and damning. If you want particularly good insight into his violence and abuse, then I recommend reading Marina Picasso's (Picasso's granddaughter) memoir titled: Picasso: My Grandfather. I also recommend Françoise Gilot's (romantic partner of Picasso) books, Life with Picasso and Picasso and Matisse. It is through the memories of the people who loved Picasso and who loved him in turn, that we hear of his sadistic nature that drove his lovers to suicide and we get personal letters that he wrote to Gilot in which he says things like "Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman… And it’s important, because women are suffering machines" and "For me there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats." His granddaughter has this to say about him: “He submitted [women] to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them, ingested them, and crushed them onto his canvas. After he had spent many nights extracting their essence, once they were bled dry, he would dispose of them.” And Gilot says: "I am the only one to not have been sacrificed to the sacred monster(…) and is alive to tell the tale. He was a wonderful person to be with, it was like fireworks, amazingly creative, so intelligent and seductive(…) but he was also very cruel, sadistic and ruthless with others and with himself (…) It was the greatest love of my life, but you have to protect yourself (…) The others did not, they clung to the powerful minotaur and paid a very high price."

Why this matters: The evidence for Degas being so virulently misogynistic and cruel towards women is extremely less substantial and more speculative in nature.

Degas being Jack the Ripper. Degas being Jack the Ripper started off as a tiktok theory posed in early 2024, (though you can find an article as early as 2004 written by The Guardian's art critic here) and while fun to think about and speculate, it isn't true. August and September and November of 1888 is when the Jack the Ripper crimes were committed in London and Degas was in the South of France at that time receiving medical treatment because he was in extremely poor health. (Which you can find in The Letters of Edgar Degas edited by Theodore Reff (I'm sure there's. free PDF version out there somewhere)). Also, self-admittedly speculative, but Degas didn't visit the East-End of London when he did make his excursions to London because he was classist 😭. So, it would be odd for him to know the ins and outs of the streets where the murders took place. And also he had failing eyesight starting at 36, so the odds of him being Jack the Ripper are extremely slim.

The Ballerinas Yes, while it is true that the ballerina's were often subject to horrific conditions and were prostitutes for the "wealthy" patrons of the opera house, this does not mean that Degas partook in that. in fact, most historical documentation surmises he didn't. Degas considered himself a "realist" painter rather than an impressionist painter, wishing to document "real life" in all of its ugliness, beauty and unstylized truth. Therefore his primary concern was documenting the opera house and ballet in all of the moments, not just when the girls were dancing on stage. And in many of his paintings, Degas captures the opera patronsn in his ballerina paintings as lurkers behind the stage curtains as sinister black shadows, or as men predatorily watching in nice suits (e.g. Ballet, 1876 and The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage (1874)). But Degas himself, was NEVER a ballerina patron, he is even quoted as saying "People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement...". (now this is not because Degas was morally outraged at what was happening to the ballerina's, but because he viewed the men abusing the girls as committing a sin against God by sleeping with prostitutes). But while Degas had access to backstage, he was never a customer. And in fact, Degas is a notorious, well-documented celibate. This is because Degas believed sleeping with women would make him lose his special painting ability. No lie. Here's a direct quote from Vincent Van Gogh in his a letter to his brother Theo about the artist: "Degas lives like a little lawyer and does not like women, for he knows that if liked them and went to bed with them, he would become intellectually diseased and would no longer be able to paint." Degas was also known to reject ballerina's advances as well (again, fearing women would take away his magic painting power).

Feelings towards women By all accounts, Degas friends describe him as being reclusive towards women to being jovial with them, but always kind to them outside of a working environment. He even developed friendships with his fellow contemporary women painters. In a working environment, Degas was obsessed with perfection, demanding ballerinas contort their bodies in painful positions, and making them hold those positions for hours at a time. By all accounts, this was not because he hated them, but was obsessed with capturing their movements, the limitations of the human body, and he demanded perfection from himself. (x x x) (i.e. his obsession for his work and drive for perfection as a painter made him demanding and harsh towards his subjects, not his pure hatred of women).

Conclusions: So by many accounts, Degas was not particularly fond of women, and had little regard for his dancers. But the claims that he must have slept with the ballerina's and been a patron/customer "because that's what all men did back then" are not backed by any evidence. only evidence to the contrary. I went in on Picasso because those that were close to him have written first-hand accounts of his monstrocity. This is not the case with Degas. So, while I didn't tear him down like I did Picasso, I wasn't lauding him as a saint either. I highly recommend reading the article called Degas's Misogyny by Norma Broude which details the ways in which modern times have run away with this idea of Degas being a sadistic woman-hater and how we've gotten to this point. Anyway, TLDR; I was aware of the dark "underside" of the Paris Ballet at the time in which Degas was painting his works. Do I think he is Jack the Ripper and a man who participated in ballerina prostitution? No, not at all. At the end of the day, I am just an art history girl, telling anyone who will listen that there is not enough documentation on Degas to take these claims as 100% truth, or put that man up there with Picasso. Peace and Love! <3

[bluespiritshonour]

Thinking about how popular Mai would've been if she were a boy. Like, can you imagine?people would've swooned over her like they swoon over, idk, Jet—it just occured to me that I like her because she's so unconventional for a female character.

Girls like Mai exist in real world—but women are rarely allowed to be complex and three dimensional and grey in fiction.

I would argue that Mai is a grey character; she did start out as Azula's lackey. And well, that's a fictional girl; I found her apathy stan-worthy.

I love that she constantly has a bitch face. She cracks dry/dark jokes. Wears black. Is mysterious and stoic. Does everything she can to disregard authority/even though she's not confrontational about it. (There's one difference. Bad boys are usually very confrontational).

All these characteristics exist in popular male characters. (Except for one thing that I've noticed: most of these “bad boy” characters are volatile and yet, are described as broody/stoic, like, dude. That ain't stoic, that's so emotional.)

So yeah. Coming back to Mai. Imagine if she were a boy.

A boy who's apathetic and has no passion for anything. A boy who's constantly bored/a thrill-seeker/has nothing he cares about. A boy who has a shutter for a face and rarely expresses himself, is amazing with knives and hand-to-hand combat and is gloomy.

There's nothing he cares about because caring gets people hurt and everyone wants something and is two-faced so it's safe to be a mask of indifference. Until—hold on—until he meets a passionate, hot-headed girl who's ✨ different ✨and if not anything, wears her heart on her sleeve/is an open book...

Yes, I'm talking about Zuko.

...and oh, oh, would you look at that? Now he has something to fight for!

I mean, for Mai, Zuko (after Ty Lee) is the only other person in front of whom she can be herself.

Reminds me of “he's only nice to her” trope. Sorry.

“You're so beautiful when you hate the world.”

“I don't hate you.”

Just imagine Mai as a boy. People would eat it up. They don't like her 'cause she's a girl.

[elbiotipo]

Esos malditos kirchneristas, están en todos lados

[aliusfrater]

there's something about sam being diplomatic about everything in the later seasons that breaks my fucking heart. it is literally such a positive mindset born out of the absolutely worst circumstances, a product of so many instances of abuse. like him taking on the responsibility of being the open-minded one of the two. not just to rationalise dean's behaviour but also because it's like dean's treatment of him in seasons one to five cemeted itself so deep into his fucking bones and now he never wants anyone to feel like that ever again. AND it's terminal

[dragondawdles]

happy 13 of mar to a character I have had shrimp emotions about for almost 8 years now

[respectthepetty]

Hand on Bible, I feel bad for Ter, your honor.

[boysborntodie]

Hot fucking take: During the entire Pony and Darry fight, Pony was, at no point whatsoever, wrong.

Ofc I sympathise with Darry. He’s just twenty years old and had to give up everything because he needed to take guardianship of his younger brothers. Without his parents, he feels obligated to be a parental figure to Pony (not to Soda as much since Soda grew up early and found his footing) and struggles because he holds Pony to his own standards and doesn’t understand that Pony’s different. And he was so worried for Pony and cares for him so much even though he struggles to express it.

But in the end, that doesn’t change the fact that Darry does hurt Pony and there really isn’t an excuse for that. Darry’s not an abusive person but people do hurt each other. And, despite this not being his intention, he made Pony feel like Darry didn’t love him which is sad because Darry cares for Pony, of course he does, he’s struggles with expressing his feelings but he often shows it. But also Pony is not wrong for not recognising this and for feeling like he wasn’t loved because Darry was often unhappy with him (there’s many hints of Darry struggling with toxic masculinity, including this one; thinking he needed to be strict with Pony instead of coddling him like Soda does).

The point isn’t to make excuses for Darry (and esp put Pony down, it’s literally so wild to say Pony should’ve been more understanding from the start: he’s fucking 14, not only is he supposed to self-absorbed but he should be. And people who say he shouldn’t have ‘overreacted’ are plain weird); it’s to understand that Darry’s redemption isn’t in his reasons for acting, but in the fact he is genuinely apologetic (which allows Pony to forgive him) and strives to do better after. That he’s a flawed, normal person who is, in the end, determined by his decision to become better.

[hermit-frog]

laughing at how assad zaman has went full sam reid defender of armand. He is that's my little mew mew that is innocent and wants to be protected and loved. I'm just baby

samuel is more assertive, like “no! that's not the real lestat! he didn't kill paul! we haven't seen the real lestat yet! that's the dreamstat. that's just a pov, not lestat. he didn't say that!” kind of funny tbh

while assad is more gentle in a 🥺 “but have you considered that i love him?” kind of way (same tbh)

[red-might-be-dead]

cantrip william girls night cantrip william girls night canteip william girls night cantrip william girls night cantrip and william girls night cantrino and willsijam girls nigth cantrip and william girls nijht cantrip william girls night

[rileyh20]

I need to stop making my favorite characters genderfluid, help

[atlaculture]

Hello, I saw a recent post of yours where noted that China had 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. I remembered Kuvira's Earth Kingdom map on her train that had pieces for the different states, and I counted 56 states. Do you think Bryke could have deliberately made this number of states to reflect the ethnic groups in China (which the EK is based off of)? Just as China has a majority ethnic group (Han Chinese) and 55 minority groups, the EK has a capital state (Ba Sing Se) and 55 states that are subordinate to it.

Yeah, I think the number of Earth Kingdom states might have been influenced by the number of officially recognized groups in the People's Republic of China.

But saying the 55 other states of the Earth Kingdom are subordinate to Ba Sing Se is a bit of an overstatement. The Earth Kingdom seems pretty freewheeling. Kyoshi Island, Omashu, the Si Wong Desert tribes, and the Foggy Swamp are pretty much isolationist states that could care less about Ba Sing Se's happenings. Ba Sing Se likely practices a tributary system, similar to Imperial China. Under this system, the emperor (or Earth King) allows other states to rule over themselves so long as they have an envoy kowtow before him, acknowledge him as the most powerful figure in the land and shower him with gifts. Other than that, "tributary states" are functionally independent.

Ba Sing Se ultimately only really cares about the preservation of Ba Sing Se, as most view it as the true "core" of the Earth Kingdom. Just look at how BSS sequestered itself away during Chin the Great's rampage through the EK. This is also why the court was ultimately fine with keeping the Earth King in the dark regarding the war. Basically, BSS is the embodiment of the proverb:

"Heaven is high and the emperor is far away."

[lostghost0o0]

[elbiotipo]

Tuve media interacción con una mileísta y ahora quiero estar internado con suero, no sé si voy a poder aguantar 3 años más de esta mierda