#the response is so extremely different

[galedekarios]

i saw the post about gif plagiarism you made and wanted to extend my support to you. it's really sad to see and you've been such a staple of the gaming gifmaking community on here for such a long time thaat i really hope it doesn't discourage or ruin gifmaking for you. like you're genuinely a wonderful part of the community and it is a blessing to have you around. i hope you're doing alright

thank you so much for your very, very kind message! i truly do appreciate it.

i'm doing much better after finally putting it all out there - it ate away at me for months as some of my friends can attest to - and, though i was initially very anxious since the early responses by a handful people weren't... great, with the plagiarism that was being perpetuated over months being twisted into something it was never about (gatekeeping, claiming characters, etc.) for their own reasons and biases, and being mocked or even dismissed, it was good to see just how many people ultimately supported the creators affected, including myself, as time went on.

overall, in the aftermath of everything, i haven't felt such a sense of community in a long time on this site and i'm extremely grateful to the people, who supported me through this, be it via discord, messages, asks, rbs or replies to my post.

🖤

[lucabyte]

Perceptive kid, I wonder just how much they pretend not to overhear.

[wonder-worker]

During [the spring and summer of 1141], a number of contemporary narrative sources agreed that Matilda’s sudden and unexpected success went straight to her head. Matilda’s most renowned modern biographer has suggested that “conduct acceptable in a powerful king . . . was not acceptable in a ‘Lady of the English’. This line of reasoning can be taken quite a bit further. It is clear that contemporaries expected Matilda to emulate the behavior of those women who had previously held the rank of regina, and act like a queen consort while performing the office of king. Most queens consort, however, did not have to consolidate recognition of their position as Matilda was constrained to do. Nearly all the chroniclers who had marveled at her assumption of power turned on her immediately. Not surprisingly, the Gesta Stephani took the greatest exception:

She at once put on an extremely arrogant demeanor instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex, began to walk and speak and do all things more stiffly and more haughtily than she had been wont.

But other more sympathetic chroniclers also joined this chorus of disapproval: Henry of Huntington described her as “elated with insufferable pride” while the Worcester chronicler noted her “hard heart” as she strove to consolidate her position. Had she been a man, Matilda’s decidedly authoritarian style might have passed for a regal show of strength. Indeed, Matilda probably felt that if she was to hold on to her newly acquired status, she needed to behave like a king. Thus, Matilda’s forward movement from recognition of her status to the execution of her office was fraught with gendered difficulties concerning how a woman ought to conduct herself.

...As she anticipated her crowning, Matilda strove to consolidate her dynastic claims and establish her authority. It seems reasonable to suppose that Matilda looked to her father and her first husband for examples of successful kingship as she did for representational purposes. Both Emperor Henry V and King Henry I were suspicious, uncompromising, relentless, and ruthless in the pursuit of their aims. Probably both would have advised Matilda to follow their example. This was exactly what St. Bernard told Queen Melisende of Jerusalem following the death of her husband: “show the man in the woman; order all things . . . so that those who see you will judge your works to be those of a king rather than a queen.” Much of Matilda’s behavior during the spring and summer of 1141 can be explained as the emulation of male gendered kingship. But kings had the built-in advantage of female consorts to soften the more hardboiled aspects of their rule; Matilda had played that very role herself for her first husband. Nevertheless, in 1141, Matilda eschewed the feminine aspects of queenship completely, in effect negating what could have been useful symbolism to bolster the construction of her authority. But for Matilda to be perceived as a soft, forgiving, and gentle woman at the one moment she needed to consolidate her position at the top of a male dominant political society would not have been practical.

But by constructing herself as a female feudal lord, and emulating male gendered kingship, Matilda annoyed contemporary observers. The chroniclers’ hostility may have been due to the fact that Matilda was claiming kingly sovereignty for herself alone, and not in association with either her husband or her eldest son. The Gesta Stephani described Matilda as not only arrogant, but also spurning the advice of her chief advisors, the earl of Gloucester, her uncle King David of Scotland, and the “kingmaker” himself, the Bishop of Winchester. The Gesta implied that if Matilda had behaved as a deferential woman, and heeded the counsel of her male advisors, she could have devised a means to permanently depose Stephen, and be crowned and anointed in his place. The Gesta placed Matilda’s ultimate failure at her own door, blaming it on her arrogant reliance on her inferior, womanly intellect and emotions.

Matilda’s hard-line stance, acceptable in a male king, bothered the authors of the Worcester chronicle and the Gesta, suggesting that contemporaries were confused by what they wanted the “Lady of the English” to do, indicating that, as a woman and a domina, she should behave gently like a queen rather than forcefully like a king. Combined, all the chroniclers, with the exception of Malmesbury, suggested that Matilda should have used the intercessory powers of queenship to set Stephen free, moderated the harsher aspects of her father’s rule, and excused the Londoners from financial support. Although a more diplomatic approach might have helped, freeing Stephen at that moment in time would have realistically served no practical purpose in establishing Matilda’s authority. And, in denying Eustace his inheritance, Matilda was only imitating the efforts of her father, Henry I, who also dealt harshly with challengers to his throne. Henry I kept his elder brother Robert Curthose in prison until he died, and prevented his nephew, William Clito, Curthose’s heir, from gaining any aspect of the Anglo-Norman inheritance. Matilda wished to convince her contemporaries that she was quite capable of being a king, but their reactions betrayed hostility toward her as a woman presuming to establish kingly authority.

-Charles Beem, "Empress Matilda and Female Lordship", The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History"

[nonbinarylesbianherb]

I find it almost funny the women who shame Alicent for being a victim of misogyny in a patriarchy she did in fact NOT create and had always existed. I find it funny because they think they’re better than Alicent, they think if they were in Alicent’s position that they would’ve instead been some feminist icon- no, if you dealt with the same trauma, the same manipulation, the same system that Alicent did, you would’ve ended up just like her. Not better, in fact maybe even worse.

[lyriumsings]

baldurs gate is so funny it’s just

laezel &shadowheart: let’s break you outta this religious cult!

wyll & gale: let’s break you outta this unhealthy relationship!

astarion & karlach: let’s break the people who broke you!

that’s it that’s the game

[dreamlogic]

[wesavegotham]

The different parts of Gotham War not lining up at all in terms of plot, character motivation and characterization is bad enough, but now that DC is suddenly trying to explain when other titles like Detective Comics and Batman and Robin are taking place in relation to Gotham War it gets even worse because now all of these storylines make so much less sense too.

[corset]

Our mental health has been in such an interestingly terrible place for the last month or so. Genuinely kind of fascinating to watch from different internal angles....like watching the ocean ebb and flow and change temperament at random sometimes based on weather or the moon or something. Like this shit is just terrible

[ablednt]

Granted I have the overall geographical and cultural knowledge of a 4th grader but from what I can tell the nuclear family model really does seem to be a white colonial invention

Different cultures have different approaches but I mainly hear about either large family units where multiple generations support each other and raise their children and grandchildren together or an "it takes a village" approach where children are raised somewhat communally

And I can't really speak on it much or claim that these families were free of abuse or that children aren't often an oppressed group basically everywhere I know of but the way ownership of your children is so engrained into white society is so bizarre

Like once you notice it you can't unnotice it even the most loving well meaning parents don't know what to do about it because everyone is so isolated from their own families and their own communities so you wind up with 1-2 parents who have full legal ownership of their child and are raised in a culture where you don't have personhood until you're 18 and all attempts at self actualization before them are seen as clueless rebellion. Like our culture is so divorced from the concept that a parent is someone who is helping mentor and care for their child so they can thrive as a fellow human being and it's actually so alarming

And ik this problem isn't unique to white and colonized people but it's honestly really soothing to hear about how other cultures approach and view parenting and community as a whole and to internalize it doesn't have to be this way

[joelletwo]

[its own post and not in the tags] five years later i have spent muuuuuuuuuuch time agonizing over finding the limits of my responsibilities and the exactitudes of my fuckups and how profusely and heartfelt i would apologize for them if he ever came wanting one. however i also suspect unless he got more well-balanced about a lot of things real quick in this time that he would put more blame on me than im interested in taking.

and now that im no longer thinking about this every single day ive lost some of the authenticity of my desire to prostrate myself in repentance and go for the more kneejerk instinct to blame /him/ for more than he was actually responsible for lol. and some like. preemptive unfair irritation at the expectation of him blaming me for things.

and so [avpd wins!] i still think the best option for both of us is to continue not crossing paths and dredging this up lol. bc i think all i could manage politely is the heartfelt but precise apology and then i would have nothing else i wanted to interact w him about without fighting kjsfg. thank u me every day for irritating him into giving up the pretense about wanting to stay friends so i could work this all out in the privacy of my brain and not At him

[twinknote]

nothing like waking up extremely anxious, calming yourself down, then being confronted with an emergency behavior modification session w your dog for 20 min that brings your heart rate up to a whopping 110 from stress alone bc the ppl in your house are stupid. yay echo for doing a good job but boo my mom for being stupid

[rotzaprachim]

my main thought on the quasi canon rebelcaptain wedding (the union that lasts forever etc) is that there was the Family Table and it had saw gerrera, luthen, clem and maarva andor, galen and lyra erso and that the reception therefor did NOT finish without at least two fist fights and a new leftist schism

[ever-go-on]

im such a complex person. there is so much to me. and thats really cool

[schrodingersgirlboss]

The whole thing is so gross, but what I always come back to is like.........how did anyone ever think even the very first thing Kanye did -- asking if the lyric was okay -- wasn't disgusting? It's the most "is it okay if i hit you????" bs. I have never been able to bring myself to listen to the recording more than once b/c the strain is so obvious in her voice -- the "if I don't say yes I'm a bitch oh god I guess I have no choice" going through her head. A position SO MANY women have been in before, and is SO COMMON and SO DISGUSTING. Being asked something unconscionable, but you know if you say no you'll be punished, but you know underneath that how wildly unfair it is that the question is even being asked. But you can't do anything about that, because it's so fucking normal. It's such an insane no-win scenario and it's so insane how normal it is. It doesn't matter if she says okay, WHY DID YOU ASK IN THE FIRST PLACE? Why is it fucking normal for men to write lyrics like that about real fucking women in the first place? IT SHOULDN'T BE A POSSIBILITY IN THE FIRST PLACE. To say nothing of everything else he and Kim did afterwards. And the fact that yeah, it was inescapable. I wasn't even an online Swiftie then, and it touched me -- people talked it irl everywhere.

If she wanted to write an entire fucking album about it it wouldn't be "too much." Fuck, I hope Kim and Kanye are hounded by this until they die. I hope they never stop getting mean comments and questions about it. I genuinely consider it one of the most disgusting public episodes of misogyny of the past decade, up there with the Heard trial, the 2016 US election, and everything people put Megan Thee Stallion through after the shooting. I don't think it's a coincidence it (and those other events) came right after an uptick in feminism and women gaining power and presence in multiple fields -- it felt like punishment. It felt like a big fat fucking lesson meant to teach women and girls to shut up. Which is, frankly, still at the heart of nearly every stupid backlash she suffers. No, she's not perfect, but she's a woman who's become powerful because she's spent years creating art entirely about women's interior lives, appealing directly to women through everything from her lyrics to her videos without any real interest in earning male fans or interest, and started explicitly considering herself and her work in a feminist context after a man tried to destroy her. Now girls and women fill stadiums and then the hills behind them because they love her for this. And lots of people are desperate to punish her for it. But fuck them. She's made sure she'll never be erased and I thank god I've lived to see it. (Omg that turned into a stump speech. THAT'S HOW MAD I STILL AM ABOUT 2016)

god GO OFF. i'll forever be mad about 2016 and i was just watching the whole thing go down so i can only imagine how taylor felt. i agree that she could write an album about it, hell every single song she writes from now on could be about that and it still wouldn't be overreacting. such a gross display of misogyny that most people applauded, like this is what you get when you stand up to a powerful man. and now that you can't possibly look at it without admitting it was misogynistic, the solution is to say she's dramatic and that it wasn't that bad. i even saw an article once talking about how manipulative taylor is for writing songs putting herself as the victim in that situation and making her fans spend money on it. as if writing about their experiences isn't something every singer/songwriter does, and as if we don't interact with and buy her music because we LIKE it. the mental gymnastics to make her into this evil witch who's manipulating everyone are truly impressive.

and you're so right about the phone call too!! like why are we focusing on whether or not she agreed with the lyrics and not asking ourselves why is it okay for a man to ask something like that in the first place. why did people instantly take kanye and kim's word for it, judging by a phone call that wasn't even released in full, instead of trying to analyze the whole situation? and why are we, including a lot of feminists, STILL acting like taylor swift is the only woman in the world immune to misogyny

the fact that taylor's music is clearly for women and doesn't cater much to men is definitely why i felt drawn to her from the beginning, and definitely why people can't stand it that she's so successful. but oh well, she's out there selling out stadium concerts all over the world and living her best life like she should

[kaerinio]

𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮?

𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐏 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊

usually, you're able to bottle up your emotions and ignore the frustrations. but, after weeks of shoving everything down, your body needs a release, and i pity the poor person who managed to piss you off. it's screaming crying, shouting, kicking lockers, whatever you can do to get it out of your system. it's a whole jean grey moment, fire and fury blasting out of you.

tagged by: i stole this from the magnificent @marblecarved 💖💖 tagging: @messanique ; @homebehind ; @riorsworn ; @ircnwrought ; @wornkindness ; @khrused ; you!

[essektheylyss]

Reading about the trend of increasingly higher-priced auction sales of VHS tapes and other "antiquated" media and technology and I'm reminded of what might be my most viciously-held unpopular/hot take: I absolutely fucking loathe nostalgia as an unchecked, unexamined pathos response.