You back?
Not really, I just came back online because I noticed something big happening in a fandom I left three years ago. As someone who had some weight in their voice, I had to say something, but now that that something has been said I don’t think I will be online much either. I kind of moved away from tumblr already, after all.
CW FOR GROOMING, RACISM, ABLEISM
this has been eating at me for four years.
Wow, I… I have no words except, I’m sorry. Nobody should have to endure this.
I may have little to no experience in Specord and I may have left the fandom almost three years ago now, but around or before the time of Specord we also had the forums on JB2448’s website; Crt and I (Falneou17) were mods on the forums. We did not have a lot of direct/one-on-one contact with each other over this period of time, admittedly, but I can at least second his tendencies to play the victim and dance around the fact that he made a mistake whenever he did. I don’t have screencaps of these moments as the posts that made him look bad were conveniently deleted by Crt himself, so take my word how you want to take it.
To those affected by Crt’s actions over the years: I may not have a lot of room to talk here as I haven’t been involved in the PokeSpe for three years, but for what it is worth I am deeply sorry that you had to go through all of that.
the fight is harder each year.
gotta keep going because nothing ever stops.
you deserve to be new and whole.
Can someone explain what’s happening besides someone being reborn?
In the first comic, which is from the Warrior’s point of view, the Warrior has defeated the Monster, who jeers that there will always be another Monster to fight. The Monster dissolves into mist, leaving another tiny, baby Monster in its place. The Warrior picks up this helpless new baby Monster and carries it away. They will try again and do better this time.
In the second comic, which is from the Monster’s point of view, the Monster says that this has to happen; it can’t come with the Warrior, and there will always be another. It tells the Warrior to use what they have learned to fight. It wants to die knowing that the Warrior has hope for the future. It dissolves into mist, and the exhausted Warrior collapses. The new baby Monster comes and brings the Warrior some water in a leaf. Because we are reading this in the Monster’s voice, we realize that it is a new Monster, but also somehow, magically, the same. We also see that the Monster is not inherently evil. It is only very strong, and inevitable.
The third comic is a dialogue between the Monster and the Warrior. The Warrior is exhausted and horrifically wounded. The Monster is also horribly maimed. They are both dying. The Warrior doesn’t want to fight anymore. The Monster tells them to rest and heal. The Warrior hands over their amulet, and we see the Monster’s paw become a hand just before they both dissolve into mist. It clears, revealing that the Monster has turned into a beautiful humanoid, who says they will take care of the new baby monster the Warrior has turned into. The two have changed roles. The Warrior takes up the former Warrior’s gear and strides into the new year with the new baby Monster riding on their shoulders.
It is a beautiful, ruthless, hopeful metaphor about keeping up the good fight, year after year, even when we are worn down, and how we can still face the new year with hope and light, no matter how painful the last one was, and how it is okay to rest if we can’t fight.
It’s not the new year, but things are so difficult for so many of us right now, and we are so worn down from so many fights on so many fronts, I feel like we could all use this again. Love, rest, fight, love.
Insects may as well be the size of elephants for the way I react to them.
You’ve captured the essence of the show marvelously, OP
Dogs And Cats by Lynol .
I spend a fair amount of time teaching women to kick men in the balls, and I’ve learned that this activity tends to generate controversy. Here, according to actual adults who have actually said these things to me, are some reasons you should not kick a guy in the balls:
1. It will make him angry.
I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.
2. It will make him hurt you worse.
Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.
3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.
This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.
4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.
Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.
5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.
No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.
Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.
6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.
Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.
One in four women will have good reason to kick a guy in the balls at some point in her life. Luckily, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it! And ball-kicking’s efficacy is beyond dispute, as the men of MMA so nobly helped us illustrate here. Gentlemen, if any of you are reading this, and conscious: Cheers, and get well soon (the non-wife-beaters among you, anyway).
AIA REPORTING FOR DUTY
okay, so!
There is a trick to it. You do NOT want to soccer kick the dude because that’s a little projectile aiming at a littler target.
It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t incapacitate, which is what you want. You don’t want “ouch!” Or even “FUCK!”
You want him puking on the floor, and this is how we do:
There’s two ranges where a groin kick works: close and mid-range.
Say someone grabs you face to face, or pins you to the wall, and your hands are blocked. Now you’re close-range. What do you do? You come in closer, as close as you can, and with every ounce of adrenaline and aggression in your body, you do a can-can kick.
You know the first step in the can-can, where you raise your knee up as high as it’ll go as strong as you can?
Do that, as hard as you can, repeatedly.
If that doesn’t work, here’s the alternative. You’re going to take your hand, grasp between the thighs underhand. Its going to feel like you’re “cradling” the testicles. Dig your fingertips into the fragile skin BEHIND the scrotum. Then, once you have a good grip, you turn your hand into a vise, with your fingers digging inwards to the material. If you do it right, you should feel the testes INSIDE the scrotum. You want, whenever possible, to hook your fingers under them.
Then, with your hands in a claw and your fingertips latched behind the testes, you turn your hand sharply, as though you were turning a doorknob. Simultaneously, haul your elbow back and up as hard as you can.
If done properly, this technique can tear the scrotal tissue, and done with enough force, can tear the testes out of your attacker’s body.
No matter HOW pissed he is, he’s gonna drop. I’ve tried this technique on guys wearing cups and even with protection, it is not a fun feeling.
If you’re mid-range and have enough room for a kick, the goal becomes to use your shin. The shin is actually called the tibia, which ounce for ounce is one of the strongest bones in your body. So, here’s what you do, my little bloodthirsty beaus:
You aim, you scream “DO NOT COME CLOSER I SAID NO!” (legal purposes, because now you’re officially exercising your right to self-defence). Maintain a 360 degree awareness, just in case he has friends, and then, when he’s close enough, connect your shin full on soccer kick with the delicate squish of his testicles.
What you want is as much upwards force as possible in combination with as much momentum as you can manage. When he collapses, which he will, then stomp on his groin again, and then run.
The latter has less of a trick to it. It’s primarily about momentum and force.
Remember, if you’re close enough to put your hands on him, use your knee. If he’s coming at you, use your shin.
If you can smell the nachos he had for dinner, rip his fucking balls off.
It’s easy to do, they’re tiny little squishiness wrapped in a delicate flap of skin about as thin as a toenail.
Remember: if he’s coming at you, he’s ALREADY out to hurt you. Might as well give the fucker a reason to be pissed.
Someone once told me that the way to train a proper knee in the groin (with appropriate aggression if you want to hurt him enough to let you go is to train and act as if you’re not aiming your knee at the groin, but aiming for somewhere much higher so that your mind knows to really ram your knee upward.
A male friend of a friend of the family once generously and kindly advised me that if anyone with nuts ever got up on me without me wanting him to do so, to “grab his balls as hard as you can, squeeze, and yank away from his body until they feel like marmalade. Then run.” I have never forgotten this advice.
My self-defense trainer used to say: “Eyes are like grapes. Ears are like pull tabs. And if you’re going to grab some, girls - grab, pull, twist, and bring those balls home to Mama.” …I really need to embroider that on a cushion.
“What would street fights between guys look like—or professional fights for that matter—if one could go below the belt? For one, there’d be a lot more collapsing. Two, a lot more writhing in pain. Three, a lot less getting up. All in all, it would add up to less time looking powerful and more time looking pitiful. And it would send a clear message that men’s bodies are vulnerable.“
…
“So, men generally agree to pretend that the balls just aren’t there. The effect is that we tend to forget just how vulnerable men are to the right attack and continue to think of women as naturally more fragile.”
And:
“In 2015 I wrote an essay in which I speculated about why we don’t see men kicking each other in the balls more often. We leave no stones unturned here at SocImages, folks.I argued that men don’t kick each other in the balls because it would reveal to everyone an inherent and undeniable biological weakness in every man, not just the man getting kicked. In other words, it’s a secret pact to protect the myth of masculine superiority. I expected a reaction, but I was genuinely surprised at what transpired. In public — in the comments — men debated strategy, arguing that men don’t kick each other in the balls because it’s actually a difficult blow to land or would escalate the fight. But in private — in my email inbox — men sent me hushed messages of you-are-so-right-though.“
Just doing my regular real blog for y’all. Keep safe.
Just reading these notes gives me such a warm, comforting feeling. Love you all.
I wonder what our world would currently be like if J.K. Rowling had just let the man who spent seven years making the HP Lexicon publish his encyclopedia instead of bringing him to court and blocking his publication so that she could be considered the only official source of all things Harry Potter as she tweets out updates on Dumbledore’s sex life and wizards shitting in the streets…
Oooh, okay, all right, gather around, folks, let’s learn some history!
So before this hellsite existed, there were really cool websites to go to exclusively for Harry Potter content. Some of the top ones I can remember are MuggleNet, The Leaky Cauldron, SugarQuill, and, of course, HP Lexicon.
The Harry Potter Lexicon wasn’t just a website, it was a massive Wiki before Wikis even existed. And I still go to it over the Harry Potter Wiki. And I have gone to it ever since I was a kid. Here’s what it looked like in 2005:
—
—
It was incredible!
One could (and I did) spend hours just searching through every single topic about the books, the plotpoints, the locations, the characters, all written out in journal-format, like an actual old-fashioned lexicon, each page featuring cool fanart that was used with permission and always linked back to the artist:
—
—
But the main reason to go onto the website was the essays. You think the SuperCarlinBrothers are impressive? They are. But so were the people who submitted to the HP Lexicon. I was just reading an essay this morning on the Weasley brothers’ ages. Every essay was brilliant. This is the website that made us all realize R.A.B. was really Regulus, that Snape was a double-agent, that Harry was a horcrux. This is a website that that J.K. Rowling used/praised:
—
—
She then promptly turned around and brought the creator to court. (She technically didn’t sue him, she sued the publication company, but he was still brought to court and put on the stand.) Here’s an article from The NY Times:
—
—
Steven Vander Ark was allowed to publish a condensed version of the encyclopedia (which is currently sitting in my dusty attic). Link: x
He publicly claimed that he has no animosity towards Jo for taking him to court and he continues to update the Lexicon with essays/content to this day, so if you somehow have never gone onto the website, take a look: hp-lexicon.org
—
I tried to be as neutral as possible when presenting the facts of the court but if you want to know my actual opinion, here are my tags from the original post:
WOW, I had no idea she was THAT full of shit.
id never seen the hp lexicon before and i just clicked on it for the first time
first thing i saw? scrolling weather report for beauxbatons, followed by ilvermorny, followed by the romanian dragon reserve. second thing was galleon exchange rates. this website is incredible
O .. k … *insert ben wyatt gif*
I remember this case, vividly. I remember listening to LeakyCast when Melissa Anelli was reporting from outside the courtroom, in between sessions. I remember ALL the articles and yahoo group discussions. I became a 15yr old expert on US copyright law (which has actually been pretty useful since). Everyone was, we read a billion articles on Leaky and MuggleNet and all the legal fandom experts emerged to give their op-eds. JFC, I know JKR has done some problematic shit but this was not that.
The Lexicon was run/owned by Steve Vander Ark, but it had an army of volunteers who helped decipher/siphon that information from the books. Let’s not paint SVA as some kind of poor fandom martyr, because he was fully prepared to profit off the work of his fellow fans.
More importantly, this was about fair use under copyright law, which is a big grey area where the rest of transformative works sit. JKR famously didn’t pursue copyright infringement on fan sites, on fanfic, on fanart. Which meant fandom could be a freer space, a more open space. JKR’s tolerance levels paved the way for the fandoms we have now, big and loud and in public media spaces. When she acknowledged the Lexicon on her website, that was HUGE. (I’m pretty sure she later admitted — possibly during the trial itself — that she didn’t actually use the Lexicon herself because it wasn’t always correct, but she wanted to help publically legitimise fan behaviour.) She pursued copyright in this case because the book-format Lexicon was just repackaging her work. It wasn’t including essays or meta or fanart, it was just rewriting her words in an encyclopaedia format for one man’s profit. (I can’t emphasise that part enough, because it’s only occurring to me now in 2019. A community of fan collaboration to maintain the Lexicon, and he was going to profit off them too!). She didn’t request they take down the website, because as people have noted above, it still exists. She only asked that they did not profit from it, and when SVA pursued that, she took it to a legal sphere.
This case was a landmark case at the time for helping define the line for transformative works vs fair use copyright infringement. It was also a massively public moment for fandom; they talked about fansites in mainstream media, and I remember so many articles that were just playing for laughs/astonished at the idea that people would dedicate so much time to creating a free? Online? Encyclopaedia? For Harry Potter? JFC, we’ve come such a long way. And HP fandom was so relieved about the outcome, because people were so afraid they’d be chasing down fic writers next.
It’s on Wikipedia, friends, there are sources for this. Allow me to copy and paste:
“On 31 October 2007, Warner Bros. and Rowling sued Michigan-based publishing firm RDR Books to block the publication of a 400-page book version of the Harry Potter Lexicon, an online reference guide to her work.[57] Rowling, who previously had a good relationship with Lexicon owner Steve Vander Ark, reiterated on her website that she plans to write a Harry Potter encyclopedia, and that the publication of a similar book before her own would hurt the proceeds of the official encyclopedia, which she plans to give to charity.[58] A judge later barred publication of the book in any form until the case was resolved.[59] In their suit, Rowling’s lawyers also asserted that, as the book describes itself as a print facsimile of the Harry Potter Lexicon website, it would publish excerpts from the novels and stills from the films without offering sufficient “transformative” material to be considered a separate work.[60] The trial concluded on 17 April 2008.[61] On 8 September 2008, the judge ruled in her favour, claiming that the book would violate the terms of fair use.[62] In December, 2008, a modified (and shorter) version of Vander Ark’s Lexicon was approved for publication and was released 16 January 2009 as The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction.”
(The encyclopaedia she planned to publish became the free Pottermore, which has since been taken over by Warner Bros, because the internet has changed pretty radically in the last 12 years.)
Rewriting this as “author unjustly punishes fan” because we don’t like JKR anymore is also rewriting a really important part of OUR fandom history, as well as throwing in some new biases in the author vs fan arena. Let’s not do that.
Important tags.
I’mma put this part in big bold text, cause it’s important:
She pursued copyright in this case because the book-format Lexicon was just repackaging her work. It wasn’t including essays or meta or fanart, it was just rewriting her words in an encyclopaedia format for one man’s profit.
Seconded, thirded…one millioned!
As someone else that was actually around the fandom back then, OP has not only presented a wildly biased account but also a wildly inaccurate one. Also, for what it’s worth, it wasn’t just JKR that was party to the lawsuit but Warner Bros as well. Considering it was WB that owned the rights to her work at that point, they’d have probably sued whether she was involved or not because, once again, the proposed published Lexicon was not going to include derivative or transformative work but just the published books repackaged into an index of sorts. That’s not fair use.
Also, as an aside, IDK why any stan (anywhere!) has any business being salty @ JKR (or any other author/content creator) about this issue. Y’all regularly flip shit (rightly) any time someone reposts your fanart on their stan tumblr without your permission but J.K. Rowling is supposed to just wave away someone else trying to turn a profit using her life’s work simply because you no longer like the things she has to say? Count yourself lucky that she’s as open to fanworks as she is—not all authors are and people have been successfully sued in the past for far less than what Vander Ark had planned.
JKR has done some shit but I absolutely remember this and she was 100% right to sue. Know your fandom history, people!
I can’t believe people are mad about a 16-year-old girl wanting the earth to get better
Also -
What is she supposed to do, motherfucker? Teleport?? Spontaneously develop the ability to fly unaided?
Not to mention the fact that THERE IS NO ETHICAL CONSUMPTION UNDER CAPITALISM
It doesn’t matter how committed you are to fixing the climate you still have to fuckin eat
Corporations do more harm in one hour than any singular human could do in their whole life.
Reblogging for that last line “Participating in the world as it is does not disqualify you from trying to improve it.”
To quote Jesus when asked about whether attractive women could be to blame for adultery: “If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out”.
Me as a college professor
This is literally illegal, and there have been teachers fired over this
Full and finished short-story of the black cat. Please have a heart for black pets in general, animals do not deserve this kind of hostility. Please give credit when reposting, Thank you :)
Oh godTT
Source For more posts like this, follow Ultrafacts
THE BEGINNINGS OF KAWAII
No, no, you have no idea. It actually IS the beginning of the whole so-called “kawaii culture”. And it started because girls started using mechanical pencils, which provided fine handwriting. After being banished (more precisely, during the 80s), this kind of writing started being used in products like magazines and make-up. And, during this time, icons we usually associate with the whole kawaii industry (like the characters from Sanrio) came to life too.
And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.
So yep. Kawaii is important, and it all started with cute, simple handwritting a few hearts and cat faces in some girls’ school notebooks <3
!!!!!
NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!
This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”
All the japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style - they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)
Its so so so important to understand the hyper cute and ‘odd’ fashions of Japanese girls carry such a huge message of feminism and reclaiming of their own lives.
so are you telling me that Japan’s punk phase was really the kawaii phase
I learned something about Japanese culture today!
Look at where you get your information. Make sure it’s reliable. Stop causing more pain to people already in a rough place.
[image description: screenshot of a Facebook post by Marisa Dahlman, timestamped Friday at 3:16pm. Date not specified.
Post reads as follows
I performed an emergency surgery several months ago to treat a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The patient could have died, but we were able to stabilize her and send her home the same day.
She called my office this week in tears asking why we did not reimplant her pregnancy in her uterus, why did we not offer her this option. Because maybe her baby didn’t have to die.
Pseudoscience is invading my operating room and my relationship with my patients. This poor woman had to have emergency surgery, and then grieved the loss of a pregnancy that was never viable, that could have killed her.
And now she is grieving it again because politicians who lack even the most basic understanding of the physiology of pregnancy are dangling untruths in front of her and calling it fact.
In case anyone reading this is wondering, THIS IS NOT A THING. It is NOT POSSIBLE to reimplant ectopic pregnancies into the uterus. These are NOT viable pregnancies, and all the wishing in the world, the magical thinking, the political grandstanding, will not make it so.
End image description]
Hi friends. Quick anatomy lesson, complete with fun pictures.
This is the reproductive system in question.
Interesting, right? I’ve been told it looks like a shark.
In viable pregnancies, a fertilized egg (known as a zygote in biology) implants in the wall of the uterus.
As the pregnancy progresses, the zygote grows. Cells undergo mitosis (where the cells replicate) and differentiation (where the cells take on special jobs and become organ systems). At full term, the zygote resembles a baby we know.
The placenta delivers nutrients to the fetus and helps detoxify wastes. From the placenta comes the umbilical cord, which serves a similar purpose. The fetus’ head presses against the cervix, through which it will pass during birth. The part in the circle are the pregnant person’s internal organs! The uterus smooshes them to make room. It’s no wonder they use the restroom so often!
In an ectopic pregnancy, however, the zygote doesn’t implant correctly.
It can implant in a variety of places (including the fallopian tube, pictured) to which it is not suited.
After it implants, it continues to undergo mitosis (which we talked about earlier). Whereas the uterus is equipped to deal with this exponential growth, other parts of the body are not.
As the zygote grows, it puts immense strain on the organ it implanted in. If it continues to grow too long, it can rupture! The zygote will lose blood supply and will quickly die. The pregnant person will begin to bleed internally without proper medical care. Left alone, it can lead to death of the pregnant person.
This diagram is a little complex, but put very simply, because the zygote hasn’t implanted in the right place originally, it cannot be removed and implanted in the correct one. It won’t be able to fuse correctly with the uterus, or to send signals to develop the umbilical cord and placenta we talked about earlier, not to mention that the rupture causes blood to be diverted from the zygote, effectively killing it before it can be implanted.
Not only is it futile, but it’s unsafe for the pregnant person. Ectopic pregnancies cause blood loss, which is exacerbated by further surgical intervention. Exposure to external environments exposes the zygote to infection, and surgical implantation exposes the pregnant person to infection, which could also lead to pregnancy complication or loss.
To make a long story short: you cannot reimplant an ectopic pregnancy. Please stop trying.
Please reblog this from the person above and not from the TERFs that jumped in after. Thanks :)
Y’all really have no conception of what a billion dollars is and it shows…
Billionaires are evil for hoarding all of their money and you know it.
Hm they censored Gunha’s rising sun t shirt.
a little girl who grows up thinking all doors are automatic but actually she’s haunted by a really polite ghost
So chivalry IS dead?!
you win best response to this post
