#thats what i get for migrating to twitter for so long I Guess

[vampirerite]

CURATION OF SOME OF MY INCREDIBLY NORMAL ARJUNA ICONS // Baseball Icons

[johnnyutah]

the comments (mostly on twitter, but some here too) are full of people saying 'oh honey thats not what a polar bear looks like' or 'imagine this person trying so hard to recreate an animal they respected so much' and im disgusted lol. firstly, the link just redirects you to someones blog where they post random 'historical artifacts' or culturally important locations with sparse information about where you might find these artifacts, not an actual Museum dedicated to preserving a historical record of the artifacts. i found another source for the carving: a gallery in britain where everything is for sale, including this piece which is marked as already sold (without specifying the buyer). (heads up that the gallery categorizes the art with a word considered a racist slur by many northern indigenous people. i am not indigenous and not the right person to speak on that). there are countless carvings in the world-- there are even countless polar bear carvings, for reasons i'll get into later. this is a very, very small one with no artist to attribute the work to, and no proper source. i don't think that means we should dismiss it.

secondly. 1900 was not that fucking long ago. neither was 1800. they were long enough ago that the artist here has been lost to time, because in the 1800s there was not yet a 'push' in canada to preserve or even recognize indigenous art, but that time period is not so 'ancient'. comparing this to mesopotamian art or commenting on the lack of 'realism' is fucking ridiculous and insensitive and small-minded. even if the piece wasn't titled by the original artist, which is unfortunately likely, and even if it had no artistic significance at all, we could still take a context clue from the first word: anthropomorphic. and, of course, it does have artistic significance.

thirdly, in this post (stolen right from twitter), the 'culture' of origin has been reduced to 'native alaskan'. this is likely a combination of the date of origin of the art and a failure on the part of the archival sources (again, in this case, a british art dealer). people belonging to many different groups call themselves 'alaskan natives', including indigenous peoples that have migrated around the continent. without the detail of which nation this artist came from, it's impossible to properly understand their relationship to this art, but we can make educated guesses without reducing it down to 'haha funny bear'.

the piece immediately stood out to me for several reasons. polar bears are extremely significant in inuit art, and you can often find creatures with the heads or bodies of humans. the spiritual beliefs of inuit people were more than important, affecting the way of life for many semi-nomadic people. shamanism is an observable phenomenon specifically in northern indigenous art from this period and before because it reflects their history and mythology. shapeshifting was often represented in art; you can see pieces that are half-fish, half-human. inuit artists who lived in-land frequently created soapstone or ivory carvings of polar bears like these ones, whereas ones living closer to the ocean also created representations of walruses with human heads or bodies. (in fact, the gallery that briefly had possession of the polar piece actually mischaracterize it as a 'walrus' too.) art like this was never meant to look exactly like a polar bear; it's a beautiful and spiritual anthropomorphic representation of mythology handed down across generations.

a lesser known fact about inuit art is that once the world 'discovered' their art, specifically once the canadian government became aware of it, there was a boom in the trading and selling of inuit art. the only problem was that art sellers were only interested in seeing artistic representations of the arctic that were considered palatable, or even stereotypical. artists could ship prints of inuksuit, polar bears, owls, or other 'traditional' art ideas. it was fine to venture into the spiritual so long as their religious artwork did not get political. they were discouraged heavily from selling unique art about their experiences. in the last fifty years many indigenous and inuit artists have begun fighting against this idea, shattering the preconceived idea of what inuit art 'should be' while also honouring the artists who came before them, and bringing global awareness to the plight of their people. the northern indigenous nations have suffered newly severe mental and physical health crises over the last century with absurdly high costs of living and suicide rates. i think it's important while appreciating any indigenous art to consider not only the history of the piece but also the current state of the artist, and in this case the state of their descendants. art is inherently political. thanks for reading my absurdly long rant about this post!

Anthropomorphic Figure of a Polar Bear with its Cub. Medium: Carved Walrus Ivory. Culture: Native Alaskan. Date: c. 1800 to 1900. Place of origin: Bering Sea by Museum of Artifacts

[thepaddedamby]

It's Been nearly Seven years now.

Holy shit do we have a fuck ton of things to talk about here.

Where the hell did you go???

So, this has a short answer, and it has a long answer. The short version is that I just migrated away from the site. I pursued other goals I had, and I migrated away from Tumblr. Simple as that. Though this isn't exactly the full story.

After the rest and I of the Tumblr group had created the Red Light Room, we have to go on a hiatus due to lack of content and the growing discourse between myself and two other members of the group. This had lead to a post that was made about what would happen to the stream moving forward. We asked for requests of games and other topics we could use for future podcasts. Well, I'm sure you can probably guess how everything went. We got absolutely nothing. After a few months of waiting for something to appear, we had gotten nothing and decided to just leave it be. Dahlia, Midnight and Lusties Pleasures had all left Tumblr. I had left shorty after I never really looked back to this site in the slightest.

So, What happened after that?

Nothing much honestly, After I had left in 2017, I had a few big changes happen in my life. Some very good and some very bad. We'll get to all those in a moment. After I had left Tumblr, I had moved over to twitter for a short time before dropping out of any public eye for a long while. And while Amber's Padded Palace had vanished, the person in control of it did not.

In late 2018, I had started to date someone that would eventually propose to me just two years ago. Oddly enough, you all called it. Midnight and I had started dating. I was invited to move from my state and live with him, Lusties Tavern, and Lusties Pleasures. I of course had agreed and moved in with them. This was in early 2019. From there I had lived with them all for about two years. More on that in a moment.

What happened with The Red Light Group?

NOT GOOD THINGS! So, this one is a bit of a long one so I'll try and put what I mostly remember so bear with me. So everything had started about six months after I had moved in with the group. Any personality that Tavern and Pleasures had shown had melted away, leaving me dealing with almost completely different people. People who were inconsiderate, lazy, gaslighting, Manipulative and all together scum of people. This is the absolute hell I had to live through for about two years.

The issues had started with Pleasures. What I thought was a general cool dude had turned into a homophobic, self-absorbed, Toxic, "Man's man" (Very Toxic Masculinity.) Every little thing that had broken down in the house, it was automatically my fault. Internet goes out? My fault. T.V. Busted? My fault. Everything was placed on me. Everything had to be controlled by him, the location of the router, who the "bread winner" was, etc. We had butt heads a good amount of times over the two years, never in a good way. He had to right on every occasion, the end.

Then there was Dahlia. If your conversation was not on her, then there was a problem. Sad scene in a movie? Loudly announce that "I'm not going to cry." Tragedy in your life? Loudly announce "Well my brother died a few years back let's all talk about this instead." and proceed to cry crocodile tears. Suggest a small change in plans then? "Oh...Okay then...Thats fine" The loudly sigh and mope. Everything as stated earlier needed to be about her. If not? There was going to be a problem.

Problems had kept going through the house for the better part of two years. Though everything had changed in august 2021. Midnight and I had arrived home from a vacation to California to see my parents. Though when we had boarded the plane to go back to Texas, we had gotten a message in the shared roommate chat on discord. They had said that we were horrible people, and they were moving out. in this note they had also accused me of being an abusive Boyfriend to Midnight and Midnight had been a pathetic shell of a man. Of course, there was a lot of anger over this but somehow, Midnight and I moved on.

What happened after they left?

Midnight and I moved on. Plain and simple. over the next few days that they had moved out, they had proceeded to turn every mutual friend against us and gloat about it. Mentally it had started to hit us but as we had found out, we didn't need them. Life had already started to get better. We had moved from the shit hole we lived in, gotten better jobs and became engaged. What happened to them? As we have heard, everyone has started to turn on them. Though do we care? Not in the slightest. Karma is a bitch.

So what now? Why this post?

Well, this post was something I had needed to get off my chest for a while now. I wanted to come back to Tumblr for promotion stuff to hopefully post new Fic's I'm working on and hopefully post new journeys I'm starting. If this post swayed some former opinions, then that's awesome! I won't be focusing what I used to do on this blog, everything will be original content along with a few posts about my padded life in general. Plain and simple. With that, I'll be posting links to my other accounts to keep anyone interested up to date. I honestly hope you enjoy what's coming up and Stay Padded my Friends!

[aroaceacacia]

Hello! You don’t have to answer this if you’re not in the mood for it but I had some questions about 2019 hermitblr. I joined the community very recently through Last Life and been reading up on what 2019 was like and ig my question is… how did the fandom wise up and get their shit together? What changed that made hermitblr become the less agressive space it is now? Im guessing people jumped to twitter or migrated to a different fandom? ik for the ATUS author, they’re on Twitter now and they were in a long retweet argument chain about DSMP last I checked

I think it was in part that a lot of the people spearheading the aggression backed off from tumblr (switching to twitter or leaving the fandom altogether), part of it was waves of new fans coming in from the starts of seasons 7 and 8, and honestly? I think the rise of the Dream SMP in 2020 and the resulting division of the roleplay from the actual reality of the players - ie. the much larger DSMP fandom making it very clear that they're indulging in a fictional story - made a HUGE impact on the way people respond to shipping and the other topics people used to have problems with, I think. (Like for example - @/commieinnit posting about DSMP Badboyhalo and Skeppy is very very much not reflective of the IRL people who play them.)

I don't think I can say much about hermitblr's attitudes rn, but I do know that I'd say trafficblr understanding that 3L/LL is fictional and that on occasion the characters get married/have romantic tension (flower husbands, mumbo and martyn, ethubs) has lead to a fandom community thats much more shipping-neutral than they were in the past; like, I've been relatively open about reading 3L Ren and Martyn as having homoerotic tension/shipping them and nobody has bugged me about it at all. On the Dream SMP side, characters abuse each other and commit atrocities in canon; suddenly the sort of angst that hermitcraft fans used to produce seems a lot less of an issue.

So basically, a combination of old fans cycling out, new fans cycling in, and influence from fandom crossover in affecting how people view the content they're watching has done it, I think

[captaindaddykru]

The 100 Ask Game

i was tagged by @foreverandalwayscrysis even though i accidentally end up ignoring her for weeks bc i’ve migrated towards twitter. major dumb b*tch energy.

1. What Station on the Ark would you be from? probably argo station bc im from the south and im surrounded by farmers. theyre everywhere. get me out.

2. What would you get arrested for on the Ark? yelling at someone in command for being a basic bitch? fighting for equality? stealing meds for the poor?

3. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground? if bellamy asked me to? y-yeah.

4. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like? (Clarke: deer/Raven: a raven duh..) i’d love a turtle

5. If you could resurrect any MINOR character who would it be? ok if we dont count miles ezekiel shaw bc he was in more than two eps, definitely wells.

6. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they? bellamy, clarke, raven, shaw & harper. 

7. What Grounder Clan would you belong to? there is only one kru<3<3 anyway, floukru if it was my own decision.

8. What would your name be in Trigedasleng? sumn like maksim? or just maks? idk the whole language is confusing to me

9. Thoughts on Finn? Some people hate him, and others love him, so I’m curious. did everyone try the chicken? i thought the chicken was lovely. nah, all jokes aside -- what he did to raven was absolutely disgusting, but i kind of liked his storyline. how he went from being holier-than-thou to absolutely losing his damn mind over clarke to point he shoots up an entire village of innocent people? it was interesting. but he died when he shouldve.

10. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does? im not gonna take shit. grass is always greener on the other side.

11. What character do you relate to most? definitely clarke. thats why i’m so hard on her.

12. What character do you like the least? echo. groan every time i see her face.

13. Describe your delinquent outfit. (Would you wear something like Murphy’s jacket with the spikey red shoulder patch or have a trademark like Jasper’s goggles? Be creative, yet practical) oh i love this one! uhm. probably like jeans, but ripped. black ankle boots. a shirt -- something with cleavage definitely, i think a regular tanktop. a dark jacket. idk. i would always have a gun/knife holster on my thigh i think. (ok i wanna look like lara croft). and i would enjoy if i could wear any shade of lipstick. i would want that to be my trademark. i find berries or sumn in the first ep.

14. Favorite type of mutant animal? that monster spying on lincoln and octavia in the woods. wonder what happened to that one.

15. What would your job be on the Ark? something medical for sure.

16. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked? yeah no biggie im (almost) a nurse. ive resucitated ppl before.

17. If Lexa wasn’t Heda, but she was still alive, then who would have made the best commander? dont kill me, but definitely luna. i know she didnt want it, but she wouldve been the best fit.

18. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty? probably cry all night or get super giggly. either or.

19. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? A more John Murphy approach or Bellamy Blake approach? i dont believe in the dead penalty in modern times, but like she was old enough to know killing people aint right. especially not for revenge on an innocent person. so i say the murphy method.

20. Who should have been the Chancellor, if anyone? they shouldnt have one person in charge, but if they have to, i’d say clarke. fuck them old ppl tbh.

21. Would you have been on Pike’s side like Bellamy or on Kane’s side? Or Clarke in Polis? i think bellamy went through some personal stuff that made him side with pike. if i were in the situation myself i think i would be digusted by pike’s xenophobia, but if they said there was an army outside waiting to kill us. maybe i would buy it? idk. depends on if i have all the info i guess.

22. Mount Weather had a lot of modern commodities. (example: Maya’s iPod) What is the one thing you would snatch while there? MUSIC PLAYER

23. What would your Grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? War paint? war paint on my lips!!! and i’d wing the shit out of my eyes too. as for a hairstyle probably like a lob, sides braided back. i dont like my hair up so mostly just keep it down. tattoos? idk if we’re all dying anyway, i’d say fuck it and do a whole sleeve of flowers.

24. Favorite quote? can i be a soft bellarke bitch for a sec and present clarke’s entire speech in 4x13 or ‘if i’m on that list, you’re on that list’. that or “who we are, and who we need to be to survive are very different things”

25. If all of the characters were in the Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning? clarke or murphy. team cockroach bitch. is this the time i plug my own thg fics? 

26. Least favorite ship? Favorite canon ship? Favorite non-canon ship? NOT INCLUDING CL OR BC OR BE

if i cant say bellarke its gonna be a short list. canon? zaven and memori. non-canon: sea mechanic, wellven, murphamy. 

27. A song that should be included in the next season? If there had to be another guest star like Shawn Mendes on the show, who would you want to make a cameo? BIG DREAM would be taylor swift but i dont think her current era fits with the show (plus its the cw....like they gonna give up half of their yearly budget for a three sec cameo?). i think aly & aj’s new music slaps and they’d fit in the whole new earth aesthetic. 

28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time? write blarke fanfic with him probably. 

29. You’re an extra that gets killed off. How do you die? i’d wanna die protecting bellamy lmao. just a full on beheading or something.

30. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of? literally no one. they’re a season too late. ok. maybe shaw. but thats over now i guess :/

31. A character you’d bang? bellamy, clarke, raven, shaw, emori, harper, monty, wells, diyoza. its a cw show. come on.

32. Would you stay in the Bunker? Go up to Space? Or live on your own in Eden?  if i was on the show i’d go up in space to prevent becho. if you have me the choice now, i’d stay in eden.

33. In the Bunker, would you follow Octavia? What would you do to pass the time underground?  i’d definitely not eat human meat. death it is i think.

34. What crime would you commit in the Bunker that lands you in the fighting pits? tryna murder blodreina for making me eat humans.

35. Up in Space, who would you bond with first? Who would be the most difficult for you to get along with? i’d bond with monty over biology i think. i would have a hard time getting a long with murphy or echo. i love the first as a character but irl i’d kick his ass. 

36. How long do you think you would last on Earth by yourself? if i have eden? as long as i have until the next apocalypse.

37. When the Eligius ship lands what do you do? try and blow them up while they sleep or sumn? or idk. if i was alone, maybe just better to make friends.

38. Favorite Eligius character? Least favorite? diyoza+, mccreary-.

39. Would you Spacewalk? i would probably? i’d be terrified but what a way to go?

40. Would you prefer to eat Windshield Bugs, Space Algae, or Bunker Meat? ive accidentally gotten bugs in my mouth before and like i said im not eating humans, so -- space algae.

41. Would you start a war for the last spot of green on earth? What would your solution be to avoid it? war didn’t help anyone. in the end, no one got to live on earth. i’d try and compromise i guess. or once they trust me, try and kill the eligius ppl in their sleep anyway.

42. Would you rather dig out flesh-eating worms or stick thumb drives into bullet holes? stick the thumb drives into bullet holes. i have fear of ‘alive’ things being in or on the human body. 

43. Are you willing to poison your sister for the Traitor Who You Love? What would you do to stop Octavia? for clarke? yeah. if she was as loco as octavia, definitely. or i’d kidnap her and say she killed me.

44. Would you go to sleep in cryo or stay awake like Marper? sleep, definitely.

45. Who are you waking up first to explore the new planet? bellamy, clarke, raven, emori, shaw, murphy, jordan and since somebody usually dies on these explorations, i’d allow echo to come.