#untrue facts

[untrue-facts]

Gerard way co-wrote I Brought You My Bullets with Garfield (cat)

[wefixspacejunk]

Did You Know? While the coffee-like beverage sold on Brination iii has a caffeinating effect on native beings, it has an aggressively soporific effect on all other carbon-based life forms. Because of this, their fuelling station has some of the worst reviews in the galaxy.

[synchodai]

I get this impression that House of the Dragon doesn't get that "named" heirs aren't really the norm in Westeros. If it were that easy for someone to just give everything to their favorite child, Randall Tarly wouldn't have needed to force Sam to go to the Wall and Tywin could have simply chosen Cersei over Tyrion as heir of Casterly Rock.

If we look at the history Westeros borrows from, the concept of "naming" heirs wasn't really a thing in medieval England. Landed gentry didn't have direct say over the order of succession until the Statute of Wills in 1540. Before then, land and subsequent titles could only be inherited through agnatic primogeniture.

Agnatic primogeniture prioritized the living, eldest, trueborn son. Claims can only be passed on patrilineally. This means that a grandaughter can inherit a claim of her grandfather's titles through her father, but a grandson cannot be given the same through his mother. However, if his mother finally does have land and titles under her own name (not under her father's), only then does her son and other children enter the line of succession.

The reason it was like this was because it kept land and titles under one family. Daughters are less preferred because when they are married, they become part of their husband's family — meaning that any titles they receive will be inherited through a new line. This wouldn't be an ideal situation because it gives two families claims to the titles. The more claimants there are, the more unstable the hold the owner has.

In other words, agnatic primogeniture was practiced for stability. Because back in the day, titles weren't just property or land. They came with governorship over a people, so a stable and predictable transfer of titles was necessary to avoid civil conflicts and questions of legitimacy.

A landed lord or lady wasn't given the right to designate heirs for a few reasons:

Most of them were vassals who oversaw the land in the name of someone higher up. It technically isn't even theirs to give away (see: feudal land tenure).

The wishes of a human being are less predictable than having a determined line of succession based on birth order. What if he becomes incapable of declaring an heir either through illness or disability? What if he's captured and a bad actor forces him to name this person heir under threat of violence?

People died unexpectedly all time. This was before germ theory and modern medicine — child mortality was extremely high. With no refrigeration technology, a single poor harvest could mean dying from starvation. Bandits, cutthroats, and raiders were a constant threat. They could not afford to rely on a person choosing a different heir every time the old heir drops dead, because the landed lord/lady could die just as suddenly.

Even 21st century families stab each other in the back over who gets grandma's house — so imagine having an uncertain line of succession in the middle ages over a life-defining lordship and without a modern-day court system to mediate.

Going back to HotD, whenever Targaryens did go against the established line of succession, they could only have done it by consolidating the support of their vassals. Only royalty seemed to have the power to bend agnatic primogeniture, but even then they were beholden to it.

When Jaehaerys I ascended the throne over Aerea, it was mainly because there were those who saw Maegor the Cruel's act of disinheriting Jaehaerys as null and void. This restored Jaehaerys place in the line of succession above Aerea.

And when Rhaenys was passed over for Baelon, Jaehaerys had to convene his lords and offer compelling reasons as to why — her young age, her lack of an heir, her Velaryon last name, etc. It wasn't a given that just because she was a woman that she was ineligible. If he was doing it purely out of misogyny, he still had to legally justify his misogyny in order to strip away her rights.

Even after consolidating support, the book mentions Jaehaerys I and Viserys I's respective hold on the crown was still weakened. Even though their claims were backed by reasons cosigned by a powerful majority, they still had to ensure the security of their rule through other means. There were people who doubted their right to rule, and those people had to be placated with gifts (by Viserys) or intimidated into submission (by Jaehaerys).

So we come to Viserys I who never gave his vassals a reason why Rhaenyra should supercede his three sons other than, "I said so." Had he convened with his lords and maybe made the argument that a first marriage takes precendence over a second one, then maybe he could have set a new precedent and gathered support.

But no, he didn't. He relied on the power of his own words and the lords' personal oaths — oaths that he didn't exactly plan how he would enforce posthumously.

And the Realm did not choose to adopt a different succession law after Jaehaerys's designation of Baelon in 92 AC or the Council of Harrenhal choosing Viserys on 101 AC. If those two events did change anything, it was that now women were exempt from the line of succession for the crown and only the crown. It did not set the precedence that monarchs could freely choose heirs. It did not upend the whole system; it only made a tweak, as most lawful policy-changes do, by carving out at an exception. It was a committee, not a revolution.

Before and after the Dance, no other monarch, lord, or lady "declared" an heir that went against agnatic primogeniture, save for Dornish who have cognatic (equal-gender) primogeniture instead. Ramsay had to get rid of Roose Bolton's living trueborn son AND be legitimized by the crown in order to be recognized as heir (only a crowned monarch can legitimize baseborn children which is another world-building pillar a lot of people miss). Randall basically had to force Sam to abdicate because he wanted his younger brother to inherit instead. And of course, Tywin despite his intense hatred of Tyrion is forced to acknowledge him as his heir.

The rigidity of the line of succession is a major and constant source of conflict in the series, so it baffles me that people really thought that characters could just freely choose their heirs. That's why we have a civil war. It wasn't a misunderstanding. It's the expected consequences of someone carelessly going against a foundational tenent of the society they inhabit.

[haunted-xander]

Literally pulled the "he's just built different" card

[weirdocat83]

Random Headcannon:

Modern Wwx writes in cursive much to the ire of almost everyone he knows. Lan zhan thinks it’s pretty and many others do too but it’s also very over the top and sometimes a bit hard to read. It gets a little worse when he’s writing fast.

[heckyeahponyscans]

Snopes.com was THE fact-checking / lie-debunking website in the 2000s, covering everything from lighthearted fare like "is this a picture of Bigfoot?" to rumors about Iraq War, which at the time often spread via chain emails or Dick Cheney.

Well, Snopes still exists and I encourage you to check it out. They will investigate until they find the primary source of a photo, a quote, an article. This is especially important in a world where AI is increasingly able to fool the human eye and human ear.

In case you were wondering, the status of the photos / articles I clipped for this post are:

Israel making a deal with BetterHelp - Real, and the company was founded by an IDF soldier who proudly brags about this fact in his online profile. Also they have previously been caught selling private medical information.

IDF soldier threatening a woman with children - Real picture but not from current conflict

Are Palestinians forbidden from collecting rainwater? Yes, and the situation is even more dire than the headline makes it sound. Really recommend this article for a deeper understanding of the discrimination the Palestinians suffered even prior to the current conflict.

Did Israel use white phosphorus on Gaza? The evidence strongly points to yes. This article is VERY good, very well-researched.

[artsekey]

Hey op, art therapist here, responding to your comic about your first ever session in therapy-

And oh my *GOD*- I am SO sorry that was your first experience. I’m absolutely dumbfounded the therapists behavior. And to find out in notes she was 15 minutes late?? I sincerely hope you have found or find a better therapist. That is absolutely ridiculous

I see a therapist and my therapist LOVES when I come in with a list of things and reasons why I think it’s going on. As a therapist- i know it helps you develop better self awareness when you write down what’s going on in the moment to help reflect on it (as someone with ADHD its primarily to help me remember lol.) So that initial response from that therapist was super weird and to say “it’s not my process???” For insight- UM!!!?!? WHAT’!?!? THATS YOUR JOB IS TO GIVE INSIGHT!?!?

As a therapist I’m so upset for you that’s just so ridiculous. You coming in knowing exactly what you wanted and with everything ready is honestly every therapists dream. It’s okay to not have a goal yet or ever- but it just shows how “on it” you are and how you want to be an active member in your treatment. Good on you op seriously.

Sorry to rant in your ask- I just fuckin love my job so much and seeing other therapists fuck around like this makes me livid. Keep doing you op! I hope you found/find a better therapist!! You got this!!

Thank you for this! Honestly, I'm really glad I posted that comic. I'd been thinking about going for years just to "tidy up", as it were-- I firmly believe that therapy can be good for anyone, no matter the scope of the problem. A lot of people have encouraged me to keep looking, and that's largely why I think I will-- It was a lot for me to make and go to this appointment, and because I have no other perspective on therapy, the whole experience reaffirmed my suspicions that what I want to work on might be "too small" to bother with (and/or too niche). I really can't overstate how her last comment about the fact that I put my needs aside contributed to a "net good" would've obliterated me a few months ago!

I'm not going to get into the weeds about it because at that point it's personal, but the comics honestly don't do it justice; it was like she took every one of my concerns, ignored them in favor of what she thought was the direction we needed to go in, blew past every "exit" sign I put on the road to get us back on track. It was infuriating.

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

[tabithatwo]

do you think shauna learned that cells turn over completely in seven years thing in high school biology and latched onto it and had an existential crisis meltdown of nuclear proportions when it was coming up on seven years since she’d consumed jackie because none of the cells in her body were born out of the energy she got from jackie’s flesh anymore?

[somfte]

okay i've had quite a lot of rum and i'm truly not trying to start any shit but "Love, for flint, is inseparable from political alliance." was very confusing to me because it seemed like the opposite of my interpretation of flint and how he loves

i know the post was about eleanor but i don't see him as *loving* eleanor. he has some affection for her, and he is kind when she is in distress. but it's not LOVE. he cares about eleanor more than most random nassau people but at the end of the day... when he says "eleanor guthrie has been arrested" to silver it's just, like...facts and news of the day, he's not distraught about it. he's more focused on silver and silver being his quartermaster and that partnership, that's what that scene is about. the news about eleanor is just exposition

everyone we see him love, he does so regardless of whether they are politically aligned

miranda

thomas

silver

miranda goes behind his back and sends that letter, and after they fight about it he comes home with an apology book because he's ride or die even if they disagree

a core part of the london flashbacks is that james and thomas have very different ways of seeing the world, different political opinions, and he falls in love with him *because* of that. "Strange pairs, Lieutenant. They can achieve the most unexpected things."

he loves silver so much he lets silver point a gun at him and tell him that what flint wants (the path to his political goals) is a nightmare, and then he lets silver [REDACTED]

the way i read it is that flint loves with his whole ass EVEN IF it's politically inconvenient for him, and it often very much is

[untrue-facts]

John Wilkes Booth actually killed Abraham Lincoln because they were gay lovers and were playing kissy kissy in the white house but Lincoln was CHEATING on him with Thomas Jefferson (miku binder)

[princesssarcastia]

tumblr is really bad a politics actually. please don't form opinions about political systems on tumblr. oh my god. this made me literally blind with rage and confusion for a second there.

just because the mainstream democratic party has started using "threats to democracy" as part of its campaign strategy this election cycle doesn't mean this is untrue?? please don't let your hatred for mainstream democratic political messaging make you also hate that it has FINALLY cottoned onto the fact that the american right would like us to stop living in a multiracial democracy/pluralistic society. that is a good thing, actually. it's a good thing that mainstream politics are finally willing to acknowledge that one of the two major parties is only interested in trying to destroy the political system we live under, is only interested in shoving gravel down our toilets so they blow up.

we do actually have a democracy. it's not a total direct democracy. there are a shit ton of flaws in the system. this is in part because, in fact, it's a relatively young democracy! I agree with nikole hannah-jones' assertion that the u.s. has only been a democracy for real since the 1960s, when civil rights legislation Black americans fought and died for started going into effect.

which is why this moment, 60 years on, is so important. it's a radical stress-testing of a system that it's important to preserve so that we can continue to make more progress from this point. we have to prove that the system can work this way.

i get it. voting sucks. gerrymandering has backed so many of us into a corner. we've politically and legally incentivized imprisoning members of minority populations so that they can no longer vote. the supreme court actually gutted some of that legislation passed in the 1960s that made us into a real democracy, sending us into the period of backsliding that we're currently in.

do you know how many of the candidates I voted for in my last election won? zero. ZERO. every single one of them lost. I get it, okay? this all sucks! it makes you feel powerless! but you can't let that feeling win.

that feeling is a lie they're trying to sell you so that you give up. so that you stop fighting for the democracy we've got. "bourgeois democracy" get the fuck out of here. oh my god. shut up.

[angelsdean]

dean literally refutes sam's dismissal of emma and says actually, she really was his daughter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[strawglicks]

"aww itty bitty flint bby innocent pure bby we need to protecc him" i will break your legs

[wonder-worker]

"[Matilda of Boulogne's office as Queen of England], initiated and broadly defined by the coronation ordo, gave her royal power and authority to share in governance. Her obligations and activities were shaped by custom established by previous queens and the ad hoc needs of king and realm. [...] [Matilda's] thorough integration into the governance of the realm was not repeated in [Eleanor of Aquitaine’s] years as queen of England. Eleanor's coronation followed a new model that emphasized the queen as progenitor of royal heirs and subordinate to the king rather than as sharer of royal power. Though Eleanor acted as regent in England between 1156 and 1158 and in Poitou on several occasions from 1165 on, her writs suggest delegated rather than shared royal authority. In England, her power was limited by the lack of lands assigned to her use and by the elaboration of financial and judicial administration. Whereas [Matilda of Boulogne's] inheritance allowed her to play an integral role in politics by securing the Londoners' loyalty and a steady supply of mercenaries, Eleanor's inheritance provided her with more extensive power in Poitou and Aquitaine than in England. Until 1163, Eleanor withdrew funds from the Exchequer by her own writ, but unlike her Anglo-Norman predecessors, she was not a member of its council nor did she issue judgments from the royal court. Eleanor's counsel and diplomatic activities, in contrast to Matilda's, are rarely mentioned. She did, however, encourage the 1159 Toulouse campaign and supported Henry in the Becket affair and the coronation of young Henry. Eleanor was not a prominent curialis; she rarely witnessed Henry's charters or interceded to secure the king's mercy. She did follow in Matilda's footsteps in her promotion of her sons, cultivation of dynastic goals through the Fontevraudian tombs, and patronage that reflected her family's traditions. For Matilda, to be queen encompassed a variety of functions-curialis, diplomat, judge, intercessor, and "regent." Through a combination of factors, Eleanor's role as queen was much more restricted."

-Heather J. Tanner, "Queenship: Office, Custom or Ad Hoc", Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady (Edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parsons)

[eddiegettingshot]

this is mostly related but i feel like what people always forget about eddie is that he had to grow up FAST. he never really got to be a kid bc he's always felt responsible for the people he cares about. i mean for god's sake he tried to drive his pregnant mom to the hospital to give birth when he was a CHILD (idr if they say exactly how old but it was young). and then he got married young and became a father young and went off to war and he's always been shouldering all that responsibility with the belief that he should be able to do it all and he should be able to protect and serve and save everybody. but that's impossible!! and every failure eats at him!! and then his marriage fails a second time (from his pov) and then his wife fucking DIES and in his mind that's all one big failure he can never fix or right. and not just with shannon but CHRIS too who is also always gonna carry that trauma that eddie couldn't protect him from. ofc the guilt he carries around with him is gonna mess with his emotions and ability to vulnerable and intimate with someone ofc it's gonna skew how he views his role in a relationship just like his entire childhood does. he's had the weight of the world on his shoulders his whole life!! that's why he's so stoic! not bc he's incapable of or uninterested in being in a relationship or falling in love jfc let him heal and live the kind of he desperately wants. with or without buck.

idk eddie is SUCH a compelling character why do so many fans want to flatten him into like. this straightforward guy (we all know why)

THIS IS SO. TRUE. THIS IS EVERYTHING IM TRYING TO SAY!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!