How traditional pitchforks were made.

It took 6 years starting from orienting branches

I love this so much

I would very much like to have one of these.

Writers?

If you have a chance, help preserve this nearly forgotten knowledge in your stories somewhere!

Wooden pitchforks are a bit safer than metal ones (little fear of rust causing lockjaw/death if you get poked), and when they’re grown like this, they’re far sturdier in many ways than anything assembled that isn’t metal...and they’re often lighter / better balanced than metal, too!

favorite sg1 episodes: urgo

James Norrington did nothing wrong. His only crime was being a Jane Austen hero in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride.

Okay, no. I tried, but couldn’t just let this post stand. Listen, OP, I agree with you 10,000%, but it is so much worse than that.

In CotBP, where the criticism that James is boring is most likely to come up, we can see in his introductory scene that James is head over heels for this woman by Regency standards. I mean, the unflappable, highest ranking Naval officer in Port Royal is reduced to a stammering, awkward mess around Elizabeth. If this were an Austen novel, y’all would be fucking swooning.

And what of the deleted scenes? (Don’t even get me started on this, I will rant for hours about how salty I am that they cut them.) We see James agonizing over the fact that he believes Elizabeth has only accepted his proposal as a means to an end. His stony veneer cracks, and we get to see him vulnerable!

‘Is it so wrong that I should want it given unconditionally?’ is such a fucking incredible line, and in a period drama, would be seen as a declaration!

But James isn’t in a period drama. He’s in a Disney movie based on a theme park ride. The film is an unapologetic mishmash of genres, and he has committed a cardinal sin by falling in love with Elizabeth, a modern character. She practically rolls her eyes at his heartfelt confessions! She wants nothing to do with his subtle emotional advances!

While, in a Austen novel, James Norrington would have been the clear hero and most obvious choice for Elizabeth to make, she is completely uninterested because he’s made the mistake of being period appropriate and not a product of the early 2000s like the rest of the main cast.

And the worst part is…once James changes so that he fits into their world…he is killed.

But that’s a discussion for another time.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

@meganphntmgrl and i talked about this endlessly when I was in NYC (and i’m trying to make her read Pride and Prejudice just to prove this point lmao).  I’m not even convinced that Elizabeth has this degree of non-interest in him, though.  I think she just already has a really big crush on Will and thinks, due to the circumstances of their meeting, their being the same age and everything, that they’re meant to be together. (Is that a convention of modern storytelling? Little bit, yeah, but it’s not unknown to either mythological romances or period romances - the class divide between them, and importantly, Elizabeth’s desire to be with him overwhelming her sense of convention and propriety, is what stands out to me the most as a 21st century detail.)  All that said, she doesn’t expect she can actually be with Will at the start of COTBP, and seems to be really considering James’ proposal. He’s not what she wants in life, but she’s not disgusted or rolling her eyes at him.  In her words, more or less, she kind of knew he might propose, and knows her father is all for the match, but it still took her off guard.  She’s having to decide on a realistic course for her life and to put aside her dreams, because she’s a woman now, whether she feels ready for that or not.

COTBP is a film written by men that thinks it’s a story about a girl being forced to choose between reality and romantic fantasy, and it’s very clear that Elizabeth knows that Norrington is an appropriate match for her.  Even though she does, in the story, accept his proposal as a means to an end, her acceptance is still fully serious.  (And for all I might joke about her dumping him or whatever - the proposal doesn’t get a big, dramatic rejection.  He sees her standing beside Will and asks if this “where [her] heart truly lies”, and she confirms it.  The breakup is implicit, but he instigates it, seeing this is what she wants.)  Elizabeth’s heart might belong to another man, but there’s no sulking or anger or even too much reluctance when she accepts James; she might even know they could be happy together.

When Will reminds her that her fiancé will want to know she’s safe after the climactic battle, as much as it hurts her, Elizabeth leaves.

tl;dr Elizabeth isn’t so much of a Spunky Modern Heroine Rejects All Trappings Of Period Drama stereotype that she doesn’t compromise on what she wants as society, her family and her fiancé dictate.  She accepts James’ proposal and is prepared to marry him; she never tries to run off with Will; it is James who breaks their engagement for her happiness.  There is no indication that Elizabeth particularly dislikes him; he just isn’t Will.

Then I just really really love their relationship dynamic in DMC and AWE because it’s not founded on expectation or obligation anymore and it isn’t hindered by propriety.  As soon as those things go away, they actually relate to each other like two people who have known each other for ages.  Elizabeth isn’t an unfriendly sort of person, but she doesn’t just go around relating to the other characters she doesn’t know very well.  The bits of conversation she has with James Norrington in Dead Men’s Chest are more real conversation than she and Will ever have in the entire film trilogy.  Will and Elizabeth get these pining, lovelorn speeches and bits of drama, but James and Elizabeth just talk like old friends.  You already know about the deleted scene where they casually strike up conversation on Isla Cruces; I love the moment where he makes a comment suggesting his dark mental state, and she gives him a look I can only describe as Suddenly Interested.

And she holds his gaze for a couple of frames!

So, not like, romantic interested. But like. Realizing this guy she’s known since forever has depth, and she wants to see it.

They’re interrupted by Jack, who is in this film particularly (a lot more than I realized, actually, but on the writers’ commentary Ted and Terry cannot stop bringing it up) is hoping to get Elizabeth to himself, and clearly picks up on this moment as infringing on that hope.

Curse of the Black Pearl was consciously written to frame Elizabeth as the protagonist, and when she chooses Will at the end, it’s because he and he alone among her potential love interests embodies her romantic dream.  Torn between the reality of Norrington, a man she’s always known might propose to her, a lawful man, a good and honest man, but embodying the smothering sense of obligation that comes with her class and gender role - and the reality of Jack Sparrow, a pirate she’s read about with eagerness who shows her that pirates genuinely are pretty scummy people, dirty and disloyal to everyone - Will appears to offer her a third option: someone who breaks the law, but only for the right reasons; someone who defies social convention, but only to better society. 

Except Ted and Terry are men and what seems obvious to me is that the third option Elizabeth really needs is to graduate from the damsel role life appears to have slotted her into and become the romantic hero she dreams of.  Sure, I buy that she loves Will, with a sort of infatuated and light-hearted love that could develop into something more but could just as easily not - but most importantly, what Will represents to her is a projection of the life she wants for herself.

And acquires, in the next two films.

Elizabeth’s narrative arc, if it weren’t tucked underneath or behind everybody else’s, is the most well-developed narrative arc in the trilogy, well beyond the first installment which is the only one that they actually wrote to particularly revolve around her.  Jane Austen heroine?  Maybe.  Probably not.  But the protagonist we deserved, most definitely.

And as much as I do like Will as a character - I actually think his storyline would have gotten the resolution and impact it deserved if he hadn’t been treated as the protagonist, as much as I think hers would have been, but this post isn’t an excuse for me to air my grievances lol - the character whose storyline most follows hers is Norrington.  

Her arc is about finding her place in the world, rejecting the specific oppressive reality she believes is inevitable as a well-bred 18th century female and embracing the heroine swashbuckler she’s wanted to be all her life but projected onto male love interests.  And this arc is a microcosm of the larger plot in a way no one else’s is - Beckett’s threat to end the age of piracy and keep the entire ocean under his thumb threatens her specific character growth and reflects the world she’s trying to escape in a way that is not half so resonant for anybody else.

Will’s story is, excepting turns of the plot in which he’s trying to save Elizabeth, entirely about his relationship with his father, and how that affects his identity.  It has nothing to do with society beyond the tensions in the first film where he wants to be respectable but has learned his father really was a pirate all along - after that film, there is no thematic or actual connection to society in Will’s plot, which is why it gets so exclusively connected to the supernatural storyline.  But Norrington’s arc is also about his place in the world.  After the first film, in which he and Jack and Will  operate as foils to one another, each of them demonstrating one of the paths Elizabeth may follow as she grows increasingly experienced and consequently disillusioned, Norrington has his fall from grace and subsequent identity crisis.  His maintaining the wig and coat while a drunken, miserable wreck on Tortuga, and his willingness to throw everything away to regain his former standing, implies that the role of Naval Officer was the whole extent of his identity.   So, yes, the man lacks a viable personality in COTBP - it works out to seem intentional by the sequel, because it becomes clear the role he was inhabiting was the only person he knew how to be, and without it he discovered how little of a person he was.  This is a grim inversion of Elizabeth’s storyline.  Elizabeth becomes more and more her true self, including symbolically casting off and manipulating her wedding gown, while Norrington symbolically clings to the relics of his former life and wallows in existential despair.

By the time of AWE, Norrington has discovered that his is not, in fact, nothing, without his social role - as evidenced by his willingness to betray all that he must stand for when that role has been resumed, to “choose a side”, and to choose Elizabeth’s.  But yes… then he dies.  

Both in the substance of their actual conversations, which, owing to their rarely being about love, convey a greater sense of compatibility than Will and Elizabeth’s conversations never being so casual and often running to the dramatic, and the symmetry of their narrative arcs, the story of Elizabeth and James Norrington really would have made a perfect romance.

@morethanprinceofcats really out here bringing the “in this essay I will…” meme to life

@smallvillecommunity this is…….. the nicest thing……… anyone has ever said to me

Rule one of fandom: there are some things that only exist for us.

Don’t send actors fics

Don’t give them explicit art ever

Don’t tag them in rpf questions or theories

Don’t try to bring them into fandom drama of any kind

Don’t hold them responsible for what the producers and writers decide

They’re still people.  They have private lives, which do not include fandom.

A lot pf people don’t understand this and it’s a shame

ALSO: DO NOT SHIP REAL PEOPLE WHO PLAY CHARACTERS WITH EACHOTHER??? THEY ARE NOT THEIR CHARACTERS!

No.

If you want to bash rpf shippers for *existing*, make your own post.

RPF has been a part of fandom since the beginning, and I’d highly recommend doing some research into the topic; as always, Fanlore is a good place to start.

The problem with RPF is when people breach the fourth wall, which fandom is doing more often as the internet expands and becomes the current culture, and newcomers to fandom either are not taught or do not care about the basic rules (i.e. the purpose of this post).  The problem is not with people having fantasies or telling stories.

Fandom is transgresive by nature as much as it is transformative, because we are thieves and magpies and because here we’re allowed to talk about things that we’re not supposed to in mainstream culture.  I have never seen a space like fandom creates, where people are able to share their desires and fantasies and kinks openly and *talk* about the taboo.

And when people come along and talk about how RPF shouldn’t even exist, it is frequently less rooted in a concept of “this causes this specific harm” and more “this is disgusting and I don’t want it near me, how can this even exist.”  It causes discomfort because it’s rooted in taboos (talking about sexual fantasies in public, openly, even though those same fantasies are well acknowledged in pop culture - think about the concept of the “free pass”).

When people break the fourth wall and get the actors involved, sending fics (or letters back in the old days), explicit images, harassing them online or at conventions and concerts, they have committed actions that cause harm.  And there is real harm, I’ve done my digging and seen the results in bandoms and fandoms (hell, my fandom has done some things over the years.)

Thoughts are not actions.  Fantasies do not make you a villain, telling stories is not a sin (though it has been a crime).  Sharing those things with other people is part of what makes fandom culture what it is.

There are conversations that need to happen about objectification and dehumanization, there are conversations (like this post was meant to be) about maintaining healthy boundaries and treating the actors as people when we interact with them; there are conversations that need to happen about how much more mainstream fandom is now than it was fifty years ago, and what that does to the relationship dynamic we have with our creators and actors, what may need to change as we move forward.  The Hockey RPF fandom’s solution to that problem was to lock a great deal of their content so that the fourth wall could not be breached.

RPF is the single greatest squick I have dealing with fandom; the way people talk in my fandom hits my “someone is altering my sense of reality” button really hard.  I frequently have to blacklist it to control my exposure to the low-level shipping that permeates everything in my community, otherwise I get punchy.  But my discomfort with the topic doesn’t mean I’m ever okay with throwing those people out of the communities they helped build.

I don’t have to like something to defend it.  Fandom is built by people who were told “you shouldn’t do that, go back to the shadows”, and we are not doing vague purity-culture and thought police nonsense tonight.

OP, fantastic post but this rebuttal is a thing of pure beauty. Thank you.

Humans are not parasites on the world.

One thing that I think a lot of Environmentalists in America really overlook is that humans are supposed to be part of an ecosystem.  Humans are part of the food web; we fill an environmental niche, just as much as beavers and wolves do.   

We are SUPPOSED to interact with the environment- the problem arises when we begin interacting with the environment in UNSUSTAINABLE ways. This idea that we should try to “return” the environment to the way it was “before” humans so so so often ignores the way that Indigenous people all over the world were (and are) an important part of their environments- and trying to “preserve” those places without people filling their ecological niche can cause harm in super weird ways. 

You know how its shitty for deer populations if you take out all of the wolves? It’s just as bad if you stop all human hunting too. Humans hunting deer has been an important part of the food web for thousands and thousands of years! Deer populations NEED hunters- human, wolf, cougar- to stay healthy. 

Yes- massive clear cutting of forests and strip mining is bad. HOWEVER, not allowing Indigenous people to practice traditional controlled burns of grass lands? Not only makes wildfires worse, but ALSO fucks up the bio-diversity of those grasslands. Totally unmanaged “pristine” grasslands without humans are actually less healthy than grasslands that are sustainably managed by people.

Mono-crop super farms are not good- but humans have been farming for thousands of years- tending for plants and increasing their yield, monitoring the soil, in ways that benefit those plants and the other animals that eat them, and the other plants that use that soil, and the insects that make their home there. Sustainable, diversified farming isn’t bad. 

Laying out acres and acres of asphalt and oil pipelines? Bad. But digging natural cisterns in the dessert that catches rainwater for grazing animals to use? Benefits the entire ecosystem and all the animals in it. 

We are part of the environment. We belong here. And the ecosystems that human beings evolved in and lived in need us just as much as we need them. We aren’t parasites on the planet, we are a part of it. It’s just that global capitalism has thrown us terribly out of balance.  Colonialism and profit-seeking are the problem- not human beings existing.  

The goal of environmentalism should not be to protect nature by keeping humans totally separate from it, but rather to restore balance with our interactions with nature, for sustainable practices that help us coexist with the ecosystems that we are part of. That we have been a part of forever.  And that is hard with billions of people on the planet, yes, and we will need to be clever and resourceful and thoughtful to find ways of restoring that balance, it will take a lot of people working together to find those answers- but humans’ greatest trait has always been our cleverness and our ability to work together. 

Interestingly, if your apology language is showing insight then it actively benefits from a lot of things that are discouraged in modern social justice contexts. Like, I appreciate it if someone says to me ‘hey, I was hostile towards you because I was brought up in an awful purity-culture religious environment and I never really learned that people like you were people’. 

But I think that’s exactly the kind of behavior that often gets a reaction of “so do you want a cookie for basic human decency?” or “stop making excuses”, mostly from people whose apology-need is accepting responsibility and who read that as refusing responsibility. 

It’s not an apology, and what’s appropriate for apologies is a little different, but recently I read a touching, smart and self-reflective post by a woman exploring the horrible sexism she experienced and the way it’d made it hard for her to sympathize with men and caused her to have the habit of starting interactions with men on a confrontational footing, and how she wanted to address that. And she ended by worrying that maybe the post focused too much on her history of experiencing and being harmed by horrible misogyny, and how this might come across as justifying the habit she wanted to change instead of explaining it. And I could totally imagine someone having that complaint, but wow, I really hope they don’t, because it’s way easier to connect with people when you get why they’re making the mistakes they do and why they have the needs they do and where they’re starting from, and we’d have lost something if the start of that piece carefully avoided explaining critical pieces of the picture.

Making excuses is actually easy to fall into, and it’s harmful and unhelpful. But making yourself understood - to yourself, not just to other people - and getting where you come from and what is actually making it hard to do the right thing is so important that I’d rather err on the ‘making excuses’ side than the ‘don’t make this about you’ side. 

And if people know their apology languages then maybe they’ll have the vocabulary to communicate “I need to hear that you’re sorry, and it’s not helpful for me to hear about what caused it, because I experience that as a shift of the emotional burden” or alternately “I find it really helpful to know where you were coming from”.

thinking more about this—

my apology language is insight

for receiving as well as giving

I wanna *understand*. I wanna hear that you understand. I wanna pick it apart and solve social interactions (and society and my darn brain) like a puzzle.

that’s me.

I think one reason I tend not to trust “responsibility” language apologies that don’t also dip into “insight” is that when people can’t explain what created their actions I don’t trust that they’ll be able to pattern-match to broader situations and troubleshoot the problem at the source.

So it’s like. Okay, you take responsibility for THIS specific thing and won’t do it again, but what about all the tangential things?

This is partly related to how my brain works, and partly related to the environment I grew up in and the type of father I grew up with. When faced with an armament of “I don’t do that, WHEN do I do that?, here’s 15 reasons why that example doesn’t count” it is *exhausting* fighting every single point of distress through one at a time to reach a satisfactory outcome.

I like insight as an apology language because it demonstrates the other person has taken the time for self-reflection and shouldered the work and emotional discomfort of preempting related problems.

Also, it allows for actual collaborative trouble-shooting and work on improving a relationship

Unmute !

good afternoon to ppl who get secondhand embarrassment easily, gay ppl that like christianity as an aesthetic, girls with no tits, gamers that only play animal crossing, pineapple pizza lovers, anyone who has major road rage, ppl who only pull forward to park, ice chewers, girls with hairy arms, and ppl who only take extremely hot showers

the second opening animation for Sailor Moon is literally one of the most aesthetically pleasing things I’ve ever seen so here’s the creditless / textless version

Ok this is kinda funny but imagine being surrounded by people who sound like this. The French language was a mistake in the first place but combining it with English…. abomination

@033h we’ve been saying

“toc toc toc toc you are now a porcupicicle”

to hear the québécois pronunciation of montreal in its original “muh-ray-aul” and as if it’s one syllable. perfect

“directement above your appartement”

it’s not just a fandom thing, it’s the ‘opposites attract’ kinda thing, i.e. Spock/Kirk, Newton/Hermann, Sherlock/John etc

Since I don’t read tfa fic can you tell me more about this fanon character? I’m wondering if I’ve seen him in other fandoms; it would be interesting to track to the source.

so, here’s a three-am thought.  I think that (one of) the reasons I don’t love kylux as a ship (despite, obviously, weeping real tears over Children Wake Up every Thursday night), is because hux is a character created almost entirely out of wholecloth by fanon. He is remarkably consistent from fic-to-fic, but the thing you recognize him as is that-hux-from-that-other-fic, not hux-in-canon, because literally all Hux in canon does is look mad + offer terse pieces of exposition + fire the weapon that one time.  and the thing is? fanon hux was familiar the very first time I saw him, even before having other fic to compare him to. 

because fanon hux? is fanon arthur from inception. 

another character created almost entirely from fandom wholecloth, since his actual part in the movie was like five minutes long.  like. they’re SO MUCH the same? with the combination kinky/prudishness (prudish til you get him in bed, whereupon he is The Most Kinky), the charmingly repressed rage, the Love of Research and Order, the way lust/interest/affection is coded into irritation at The Neat and Tidy World being All Roughed Up by the hot mess of the other half of the ship? I would bet actual money that you could C&P “hux” for “arthur” in a baker’s dozen of inception AUs and the character is like…pretty much the same?  and, well. I’m pretty sure that arthur isn’t the first time I met this guy, this crowdsourced tight-lipped furious perfectionist with his neat clothes and his scowling defensiveness and his biting sarcasm and his embarrassed desire to have a dude who is both sweaty and emotional take him apart. I know I’ve seen him before, in lots of different places, wearing lots of different hats, most often slipping into characters that barely take up space in the canon at all, or revising canon characters years in the future, etc. (Draco, in all those fics where he grew up into someone eerily like Hux and Arthur and Erestor and Carlos in all those fics written before Dylan Marron was cast. For one.)  and without shitting on kylux OR arthur/eames at all–because I’ve read and enjoyed both of them, and also the heart wants what the heart wants, and I get that–I think it’s maybe worth. I don’t know. considering why it is that we gravitate towards This One Crowdsourced Dude. The familiar fanon ghost who leaves one shell behind and drifts into another, like a poltergeist. Or, like, a copy of a copy of a copy, dragged from harddrive to harddrive. a familiar ghost we drag around to install in fresh new bodies. I think it’s especially worth considering why we’ve collectively/subconsciously resurrected this dude in a fandom mostly lacking in white guy/white guy ships. because he wasn’t THERE. I just rewatched TFA yesterday, and I can confirm: fanon hux is not in the building. a lot of loving effort went into imbuing canon hux with fanon hux. thinking about why we a) established that effort, and b) why we gravitate back to him, Our Fanon Guy, when there are other objectively more developed and interesting canon characters to fall in love with? 

wildehack:

wildehack:

#this is good things to think about#but i am personally offended that you would compare spock to hux#he isn’t quick to anger he is very patient#he has a dry sense of humor but it isn’t biting or sarcastic#he doesn’t strive for order he strives for logic (and there is a difference)#he isn’t prim or otherwise about sex he literally has sex every seven years biologically have you SEEN amok time#he isn’t embarassed by loving kirk is embarassed by his emotions and ‘not being vulcan enough’#like spock is SO DIFFERENT from this stereotype honestly did you just think ‘emotionless and detached = neat freak sour character’#cuz that is such a disservice#anyway this analysis of hux is v fascinating and resonates a little bit bc i’ve seen loki take on this sort of personality in some fics

Firstly, I cannot argue with your Spock analysis! (Also, I adore Spock! I have a Spock tattoo! I promise that I love him truly.)  Now that I have said this piece, I’m gonna go on a long clarifying tangent, because it is a running theme in the tags on the post/the asks I’ve been getting. But know that the tangent is not directed at you, defender of Spock! I’m just reblogging this version because it collected the fragmented pieces of the discussion into one post, for context’s sake. :)  ANYWAY. The point I want to get to is that character archetypes totally exist, and that is not a) a problem, or b) what I am talking about.  Spock and Sherlock and Jeeves all more or less share a type, which is just a thing that happens when people tell stories, both consciously and subconsciously. That doesn’t mean the characters are identical or interchangeable, but you can see how they bear a kind of family resemblance to each other. For example– “it would have cost me my soul” and “it was worth a wound" and “there is a tie that binds” are rhyming moments of Great Import to all three characters, although they refer to moments that are specific to their canons. The characters ARE different, but when you put them together in a iineup, it’s easier to see how they’re similar. That resemblance, imo, is neutral.  What interests me about the fandom ghost isn’t that he is an archetype, or that many characters are very similar to each other. What interests me is that this is a character type that fandom periodically yanks out of the drawer and dresses up in the clothes of a minor character.  That’s a very specific thing to do. It’s not something we are inheriting from any canon. It’s something we are doing, collectively, as the great migratory fandom thing we are.  We (collective fandom we) have imbued minor characters with these traits so often that I can trace it as a type the same way that I can trace Sherlock Holmes as a type. That is a) VERY interesting to me, from a nerdy Henry Jenkins-style crowdsourced-story “the people talk back to the culture” way, and b) EVEN MORE INTERESTING GIVEN THAT THIS GUY IS HERE ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY TO GIVE US A WHITE GUY SHIP WHEN THE CANON DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH WHITE GUY SHIPS READY MADE FOR US. When we talk back to the culture, sometimes we speak bullshit.  Again, I don’t think any individual person is Wrong or Bad for liking or writing the ghost (I have liked the ghost! he can be very likeable!) but I think the fact that we keep resurrecting him and resurrecting him and resurrecting him IN FANDOMS THAT DO NOT HAVE HIM AS A PRE-EXISTING CHARACTER tells us something about what we as Fandom want. It’s a symptom that tells us something about the state of Fandom, the way a bechdel test fail does not tell us whether a movie is good or even feminist, but DOES tell us something about the state of hollywood.  TFA isn’t an incredibly diverse movie, but unless you pump up the empty balloon of Hux’s character with the ghost the only other white guys to pair Kylo Ren with are his blood relatives and Supreme Commander Gollum. This is in a movie where he and Poe snark at each other with Poe on his knees; where he ties Poe up to a table and digs into Poe’s brain, where he looks at Finn from across a crowded massacre and Feels A Literal Magical Tug, where he and Rey basically mindfuck each other for agonizingly long minutes. There are Other Opportunities here, is what I’m saying.   Kylux is the most popular pairing in TFA fandom. Expanding Hux’s character is a choice that fandom made. Kylux is a choice that fandom made. The fact that Fanon Hux came canned and prepackaged for us–our ready made mayo sandwich–is SOMETHING TO PAY ATTENTION TO.  It’s not the character of the ghost, or his origins, or the canon characters that bear a family resemblance to him that really matter, imo. It’s the fact that WE, FANDOM, keep resurrecting him when we aren’t seeing a familiar enough white guy ship in the canon cast. That’s a canary collapsing in a mine, is what I’m saying. 

I keep thinking about this post lately because i’ve been thinking about the ways in which fanon culture impacts and reacts to source texts and how people can create their own meta texts with the veneer of the source material despite being caught in this sort of ship of theseus of identity

like, this post focuses specifically on hux and white guy ships in it’s discussion of the ‘fanom ghost’ (a concept i am FASCINATED by) and it rightfully brings up the issues that come with empty characters that fans project new characterisation onto rather than playing with non-white or non-male characters already available and developed in the canon. It’s a problem that is immensely frustrating and probably has something to do with the preciousness with which people approach engaging with non white characters as white people are afraid to or unwilling to imbue them with any regular human flaws or conflict in fanfiction. (a racial representation issue linked with ideas of exceptionalism and tokenism that i’m not qualified to go into detail on but am aware of)

but that’s just one type of weird issue that springs up from the overall topic: what attracts people to a text and what attracts people to certain ways of playing with that text. 

the type fanon ghost defined here fills a certain role but there are other tropes that crop up filling other niches. the overly supportive often mischievous friend and matchmaker, the self destructive hedonist who is dragged into self love kicking and screaming, the rival/ex/complicator for the leads who is often hypersexual and vindictive. there are these sort of stock characterisations that people superimpose onto characters to build drama and romance in ways that when at their best can subvert expectations and at their worst are flat stereotypes and sometimes unintentionally regressive when wrapped in an attempt to craft queer characters. 

fanfiction is maybe a kind of folk art that as a purely hobbyist artform is less restricted by the expectations of mainstream for profit works or the pressure to create anything for a reason deeper than fun, so the kinds of trends within it, the ones that seem to cross generations of writers, is really really fascinating to me; flaws and all. 

This is why I get meal kits. Do I need them? No. Can I easily make them myself? For way cheaper? Yes. WILL I??? No.

Other tips: if you are going to buy things that aren’t pre-taxed, you need to make a habit of always doing the prep AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME. it will NEVER HAPPEN if you don’t.

Get the bulk pack of steaks! But you are never gonna eat them before they go bad. If you freeze them in individual ziplocks as soon as you unpack you probably will?

Get the celery, but you need to cut it ALL UP and store it in the fridge in water or it will rot.

And don’t do all tgese at once, get like, one or two prep things a trip. You aren’t gonna get it started if it’s a huge task.

This is something I'm only recently coming to terms with and it's still really freaking hard, especially if you've grown up in a household where you constantly were aware of the need to save money/get the most out of each cent.

I cringe when I spend more money on the pre-cut up fruits and veggies in their wasteful plastic containers, or the smaller packages of things like miso paste or yogurt or cheese, which wind up almost double the price per gram compared to the large packages. But I sit on the kitchen floor crying and feeling so much worse than shit when I throw out a hundred dollars worth of moldy or expired food that's been sitting in the fridge for months because I couldn't overcome the executive dysfunction enough to deal with "proper" cooking.

It's hard. It feels like losing no matter what I wind up doing. And I've been working with a therapist on it!

So be gentle with yourself as you make the transition. It's not just a matter of "here's a cool tip", and boom your life is changed for the better. It's changing your entire way of thinking and establishing a new routine. Don't be discouraged if it takes a while to make the new habit, and be gentle with yourself when those negative feelings creep in.

And if you have those friends and family who try to be helpful when shopping with you by explaining you "can get a better deal by getting the big one/the fresh produce/etc", take a deep breath and explain you know that they're coming from a place of caring, but that what you are doing is actually the better purchase for your mental health. And you don't need to tell them that right then and there! Talk about it in other times/places with them. Bring it up in regular conversations!

A sample conversation opener based on how my therapist recommended I do it: "hey so I was reading about shopping habits and adhd and mental disorders/illnesses that affect executive function and it recommended this different approach. I want to try it out and see if it helps me. Would you be willing to support me while I try and get the hang of it?" And then they usually ask questions and that gives you the opening to explain what the OP in the Reddit screencap called the ADHD Tax and the concept of paying it upfront.

Images are of this twitter thread from Archer Kasai, depicting beats in the 1999 film The Mummy as moments in a tabletop RPG.

@sweetmauleymalloy​

@blackkatmagic @north-peach

annoying wacky sidekicks who only exist to elevate the hero are OUT. two equally moronic goofs who both think of each other as the sidekick and themselves as the voice of reason when in fact they're a double helping of dumbass are IN.

#two halves of a whole idiot is my favourite dynamic

this whole thing is way too good to be giffed you need to expirience it 

There are so many things that are TOP quality about this. The business with the mic rope. The bounding across the stage like an excited puppy or a newsie. The Voice™️ that is so synonymous with John, you know, the voice of a guy who sells ice cream at the soda fountain in the 50’s. The analogy itself.

It’s all so beautiful, such peak humor and content.

Emmy Award Winning™️

I FOUND IT AGAIN.

Here’s the “horse loose in a hospital” bit. Good news, it has closed captioning.

“I DONT REMEMBER THAT IN HAMILTON.” OMG

God I’ve heard so much about this guy and this is my first time actually watching one of his bits. He’s as funny as y’all make him out to be tbh

This is my favorite video ever

I’m going to be talking about this for the rest of my life. Because this? This is one of the defining pieces of culture from a time when life went from bad to worse. Everyone knows this sketch. Almost word for word. This four minute bit is carrying us through these times, and is probably the only piece of media to come directly from politics that is genuinely joyful.

You simply cannot talk about this era without mentioning the horse loose in a hospital. It defines the entire experience, and does it hilariously.

I fucking adore this man

i love john edmund mulaney with my whole entire heart, and you may quote me on that

i just realized that this is going to be something that people look at in like 50-100 years when talking about this era of american politics and people are going to be interpreting it and its probably going to be on someones fucking dbq like no no one outside of this time period will every ever be able to grasp just how accurately this describes Everything

THAT’S WHERE IT COMES FROM

“that’s what I thought youd say you dumb fucking horse”

HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL

OHHH SO THAT’S WHAT THAT WAS ABOUTTTT

Reblogging this in honor of the horse being sent to the hospital.

if you even fucking look at the hospital I will stomp you to death with my hooves

You know what I want you to do it. I DARE you to do it goddammit so I can stomp you with my hooves. Go on.