J.K. Rockin' on the tumblrphone

i've recently only truly become aware just how much I took for granted all the work that was put into archiving fics on ao3 from fandoms which pre-date the site. Mostly because I fell into a 90s fandom where the majority of it's fics weren't transferred over. So much of the fic that has meant so much to me - from due south, the sentinel, stargate atlantis, the list goes on - i never would have known about if it weren't for the efforts of fans who painstakingly archived works (both their own and others) and made it possible for someone like me to easily access fanworks 20+ years after initially published. like. shit dude. i have so much respect and love for all these strangers. how can i ever thank them?

I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.

And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.

Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.

When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.

And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.

And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.

Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.

I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.

Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.

so I fell down a Google rabbit hole a little bit. the whole book OP is describing is on Project Gutenberg (it's called Four Years In France and the bit about Kenelm's education starts at page 282), but I really wanted to focus on that bit because I think it's remarkably understanding of mental health issues given the time period:

Just for some context and to translate this into simpler English: Kenelm developed these "scruples" after a serious illness which, among other things, tanked his grades and meant that he didn't win an academic award he'd been trying to achieve. His dad directly links that illness with his mental health issues.

His dad describes "scruples" as Kenelm being afraid of accidentally sinning, and he's so preoccupied with it that he spends all his time thinking about how to avoid sin than, like, socializing with other kids or spending time with loved ones or actively trying to do good. It's coming from a good place, but it's preventing him from living his life (and also ignoring God's mercy/the concept of confession, but like, it's very clear that the dad's most concerned with how it's affecting the kid in general, and the religious stuff is how he's able to explain it).

And I really like the priest's "unless you know you sinned, on purpose, in the same way you would know if you murdered someone, you have done nothing wrong and therefore you have absolutely nothing to confess to me about."

But what's really interesting here is that the dad distinguishes scruples from "religious melancholy" – what we'd probably now call intrusive thoughts. Kenelm is afraid of accidentally sinning and is trying so hard not to that it's interfering with his life; people with religious melancholy are being bombarded with thoughts of sin and are convinced that they are beyond salvation because of those thoughts.

But what's REALLY interesting is a sermon I came across while Googling religious melancholy:

To translate into simpler English:

This is from 1692. THE SAME YEAR THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS HAPPENED, JUST FOR A POINT OF REFERENCE.

Alright, to ao3's soon to be arriving Wattpad Refugees, a basic guide to general user culture:

1.) Unlike Wattpads vote system that let's you like each chapter, the ao3 equivalent kudos only allows one per work. Everyone is generally quietly annoyed about this. To engage with each chapter, you're heavily encouraged to comment. Trust me, it makes people's day.

2.) Ao3 has no algorithm. By default it's latest updated work first. You can find things to your taste through searches, filters and tags.

3.) 'No archive warnings apply' and 'user has chosen not to use archive warnings' mean two very different things. No archives warnings means the work is free from any content that could require a warning tag (character death, graphic depictions of violence, non-con, etc). User has chosen not to use archive warnings means it could contain any of the warning content, be it hasn't been explicitly tagged. Treat it like an allergen. No archive warnings apply is allergen free. User has chosen not to use archive warnings, may contain traces or whole chunks of the allergen. If you're likely to have a bad reaction, maybe don't take the risk.

4.) Speaking of warnings, ao3 has very few restrictions on the type of work that's allowed. Whatever your personal thoughts or feelings on that are, thats how the site is. You're likely to run across some dark subject matters and a lot of people are uncomfortable with reading that. You're well within your rights not like these works and have your opinion on whether they should be allowed, but harassing the authors of such works (or any works) is more likely to come back on you than them. Ao3 operates on a strong policy of 'don't like, don't read'. Use the tagging system to your full advantage to only engage with the kind of works you want to see.

We look forward to welcoming you all and seeing the fantastic works you create. Happy writing!

5.) AO3 doesn't have an app. AO3 will probably never have an app. AO3 is optimized to run in your mobile browser on your phone or tablet. Anything that is selling itself as an official AO3 app is lying to you.

body paintings by Karen Turner

i don't know if this is being talked about outside of australia, but recently there was a mass stabbing event in my city. six people are dead and eight more badly injured.

the media coverage and public conversation around the stabbing has been really awful. it started with frenzied theorising- without any evidence- that the perpetrator was a muslim extremist, a palestinian hamas agent, including spreading false information about the victims to create a narrative of islamic violence. when it resulted that the perpetrator was a white man from queensland, the coverage instantly shifted- instead of a terror attack, it was now a lone wolf, a non-ideological result of an individual's mental health issues. this is typical of the framing when it comes to perpetrators: a white person is an individual, a brown person is a faceless member of an ideology. but, crucially, the attack was not non-ideological. the perpetrator specifically targeted women, specifically avoiding men except where they were preventing him from getting to women. six out of seven of the deceased victims were women, and in interviews with the perpetrators parents, they talked about his anger at not having a girlfriend. misogyny is ideological, and men are trained to harbour deep resentment towards women that regularly manifests in violence. this event was a targeted act of femicide. while it is unclear if the perpetrator was involved in any specific right-wing groups, that the attack was driven by hatred of women is not in doubt.

the new narrative is one of demonising mental illness, because the perpetrator was diagnosed with schizophrenia and there is no avenue to blame his race. there are now open calls in the media for stricter use of sectioning and more oppressive tracking, forced medication and indefinite institutionalisation of the mentally ill. it is the mentally ill who will suffer from this narrative, while the fostering of violent misogyny goes unchecked. this country never stops letting us down

@mazzy-v to add some context to what im saying-

while its true that most reporting mentioned his targeting of women, they largely did not place it in a broader context of violence against women. the police statement, which was widely repeated, ran as follows:

“We have received no evidence that we have recovered, no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation, ideology or otherwise.”

“We know that the offender in the matter suffers from mental health … At this stage, it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved.”

to select a random article-

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/bondi-stabbing-attack-everything-we-know-so-far/v9rbuprb6

the article repeats this claim uncritically, which is the pattern for all mainstream media outlet reporting that i personally have seen. the focus is very closely on his personal mental health issues while accepting the police line that there was no particular ideology or motivation.

my point with this post is that misogyny is an ideology. Femicide does not exist in a vacuum, and neither does the entitlement and rage against women for rejection apparently expressed by the perpetrator. These are products both of societal attitudes at large and specific, increasingly influental ideologies of misogyny (it is not clear if he was directly influenced by such movements, though i think it is very likely).

“Actual legit news sources” didn’t engage heavily in the speculation that the perpetrator was muslim/palestinian, but the mainstream media consists of many sources- such as tv presenters like Rachel Riley.

She was far from alone.

This is a case where the intersections of racism, misogyny and prejudice against the mentally ill can be seen in action, with the media helping to craft a narrative that demonises mental illness while dismissing violent misogyny as an individual rather than societal phenomenon.

@stcreators event 7 — humor

You're now a cat owner.

(Source)

God. Specimen.

Changing my belief system from "this is the hill I'll die on" to "this is the hill I'll kill you on" has done absolute wonders for me 10/10 do recommend

no matter how terrible my day is. i can always end my day in bed imagining fictional characters making out sloppy style and fucking raw. and that's beautiful. there's some good in this world mister frodo and it's worth fighting for

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

btw this is maybe the single most key distinguishing feature of the terfy strains of radical feminism, the seed all the rest of it springs out of: they have absolutely no faith in the ability of feminism to actually destroy patriarchy. they do not think feminism can truly build a better world. they cannot really even imagine that possibility. they think patriarchy is an inevitable natural consequence of unchangeable biological facts, and therefore the goal of feminism can only be to mitigate the worst effects of patriarchy, not to get rid of it.

they can imagine a society where women get some designated safe spaces without men around. they cannot imagine a society where the presence of men is not inherently a danger to women.

NICOLA COUGHLAN AS CLARE DEVLIN IN DERRY GIRLS

god this tickles me

(OP's tiktok here)

Your straight male friends after two beers: "Hgey man can I smell your hair"

Your friend with the haunted shamisen: [plucks a baleful chord of ill portent]

Kawanabe Kyosai

This wouldn't happen to me if i were a huge dragon

— Percy Bysshe Shelley on the lifestyle of Lord Byron (via timemarauder)

#i am glad history has produced at least two people whose shit was even less together than mine