#i think you know more about This period of history than i do so honestly we should chat

[compacflt]

hey! seeing your post about iceman and hamilton reminded me of the 1812 au that you had posted about previously - do you mind sharing any of your thoughts on that, specifically Ice & Mav's reactions to the politics of war back then, before the US military and Navy were such huge institutions (in today's standards)? EDTS Ice & Mav are decidedly anti-war (more Ice than Mav I think), but would that same sentiment be true for them back then & how would Ice feel about war hawks like Calhoun & Clay? there's obviously a pretty big role that war plays in forming national identity, especially in early US history, and with external forces like impressment & embargoes & all of the international relations nightmares that came w/ early state building, I'm really interested in how that may have an impact on how Ice and Mav view military service and duty. I would love to read this fic if you're still planning on writing it (really I love to read everything that you write tbh) - also hope you are doing well!! 😊😊

hiya!! i hope you are also doing well!! I am not sure if im ever going to post the 1812 au to be honest—i would really love to but i think it would be so long it would have to be my first priority for a few months, and I’m not sure when I’d have time to do that. but i have it all planned out at least, so maybe we can compare notes.

So here are my notes.

IF i were to complete my 1812 AU… It would not be about Ice at all. Which is how I’d be able to stomach writing about Ice’s death. AND the characters would be very very different from the characters i wrote about in EDTS (i.e. confessed their love for each other way back in the 1770s). And what I want to tackle in this AU is exactly what your ask is about—duty to your fledgling country! Im interested in a version of TGM maverick who had to be away from the love of his life, on his deathbed, to serve the national interests of his country. *questionable* national interests, in TGM’s case, or *forgettable* national interests in the War of 1812’s case. The War of 1812 is sort of America’s forgotten war—its causes were nebulous & hard to rally around/understand today, and there were no real heroes until the end, unless if you count Andrew Jackson as a hero (i really try not to). So this would be a direct attack on the heroism we are presented with in TGM: what is mavericks mission really accomplishing in the grand scheme of things? Using the 1812 war, itself forgotten and largely irrelevant, as a meta backdrop for that question of heroism.

So—this version of Ice & Mav are: actual factual war heroes. Revolutionary war heroes who were genuinely educated & truly believed in the American experiment of representation & freedom from tyranny. Fighting the British 36 years apart. (Something i really really like & will take advantage of… the 36 years between 1776 and 1812 exactly equaling the 36 years between 1986 and 2022… it was meant to be.) They’ve spent their whole lives together in the romantic sense, in a world where they couldn’t live openly together but at a time when sexuality was also understood completely differently. But they have to be apart when Ice is dying because Maverick has been handed a mission, a duty, by the USG that he has to take care of. (Part of the reason I’m stalling on this project is because I don’t really know what that mission would be… something something naval warfare, something something Captain of the “USS Dagger…” but im a better romance writer than an action writer… idk how to come up with those plots at all. And I’m not super well-versed in EARLY naval warfare [I prefer wwii navy stuff] so idk how ships like sailed clippers & schooners etc actually work. That’s a completely different wheelhouse for me & is integral to a story like this, and fundamentally im kind of a lazy person who doesn’t put a lot of effort into research if I don’t have to)

the AU would be written in two parts—the warm summer of youth vs cold winter of old age. Confronting my own fear as an author of getting old & dying, tbh. What does it mean to be a hero and die of old age? Shouldn’t you want to die WHILE being a hero? Part one: 1776-1782 is… ice & maverick falling in love and dealing with goose’s death together and cementing their hero status in American naval history (like they do in the original top gun). Then part 2; 1812/1813… ice is retired from being the first USN commodore/secretary, but he’s dying and maverick has to choose between being with his de facto husband in his last days VERSUS being out at sea, serving his country, but for a war that he (a bit metaphysically, to serve my metaphorical aims) knows will be forgotten. He can be a hero or he can be there for the love of his life but he can’t do both. Duty & sacrifice. Ice persuades him it’s time to let go, maverick goes out to sea, and then ice dies while he’s at sea. & the 1812 war was kind of forgotten, and their love will never be known by history because they were two men, so what was that sacrifice really for? Shouldn’t he have been home with ice?

Which leads me to: I am also slightly interested in an interpretation of the TGM mission as a possible su*cide attempt on mav’s part, post-ice’s death. Trying to die a hero. So, there’s that. That would be in it as well.

Some issues: that’s pretty simple & i submitted a 4k short story with this exact premise (1776 war hero has to choose between one last shot at heroism in 1812 vs staying with his male lover at the end of his life) to one of my writing workshops last semester and they loved it. But, by god, does it get 10x more complicated once you add Bradley to the mix. It’s ALWAYS made it more complicated & it’s why I’ve had so much pain trying to edit EDTS over the last 8 months (as you know). Because LETS PLEASE BE REAL TGM did NOT give me much to go on there. Like the emotional turn that is I think SUPPOSED to happen in the scene where ice and mav talk in TGM—I don’t understand it & I think that scene was only written for fanservice because it serves no purpose in the story and I’m not sure what emotion we’re supposed to take away from it. Maverick says “please send me ice, don’t ask me to send someone else to die,” (is he asking ice’s permission??) and ice DOESNT actually answer that request, doesn’t even acknowledge it; he says, in a COMPLETE AND UTTER NON SEQUITUR, “It’s time to let go.” Maverick says, “yeah I know,” so what does that actually mean? Who is he letting go??? Bradley??? Goose??? ice himself??? Is ice giving mav permission to go or not???? It’s so vague it means absolutely nothing, and i have no idea what ice’s emotional/story purpose in TGM is except to bail mav out of sticky situations and nostalgia purposes, and don’t even get me STARTED on how out-of-character it was for MAVERICK (guy who hates having his papers pulled from the Academy) to pull Bradley’s papers from the Academy in TGM, both of which are why ive struggled so much trying to fit Ice into the mav/Bradley narrative of betrayal & loss etc. And in a two-shot piece where all those years in between are kind of skipped over… idk. I feel like I would sort of have to sacrifice the Bradley storyline for the overarching icemav duty-sacrifice-heroism theme. With WWGATTAI, i was KIND of able to do both, but only after MULTIPLE rounds of very very intense editing & like 50k words of rewrites and even then it’s kind of awkward so… idk. For a quick two-shot like this I’d have to pick. I don’t have the energy to write another 50-100k reinterpreting that story all over again lol

So to answer your question it would be way less about the actual weird politics of the 1812 war and more about providing a place for me to get into mav’s emotions dealing with ice’s death and the historical implications of a mission like that, kind of glossed over in the movie … though this ice & mav are veterans of the XYZ affair / battles with the Tripoli pirates, so that probably affects how they see things… but mostly, duty is still duty & orders are still orders, but sometimes following orders means sacrificing what little time left you have with your family… following the TGM timeline where ice only has about 2 weeks left to live from Mach 9.

So, pros of the 1812 au: lots of the purple prose poetic writing i shamefully really like. Icemav open and honest with each other from the very start ❤️. Dealing with the themes and emotional consequences of ice’s death finally. Focusing only on mav instead of only on ice. Penny & sarah in a lesbian relationship. Some discussion of the cyclical nature of queer history (i.e. we’ve always been here making history and we always will be). Mav finding reasons to live after ice is gone.

Cons of the 1812 au and why I’m hesitant to really get invested in writing it: don’t know much about pre-diesel naval warfare so can’t come up with the technical action elements of the plot & too lazy to do that much research. I have a sailing license, so I know like… knots and rigging and mainsail vs jib/genoa/spinnaker and sloop vs schooner etc, but i do NOT know anything about THAT kind of sailing. Warship sailing, tactics, “dogfighting” equivalents, etc. Also: would probably have to sacrifice the whole “getting Bradley kicked out of the academy-equivalent” storyline, just to make the story less complicated. Not sure how much of the original ice and maverick the story would retain as a result. Also: i know wayyy more about the early national period (1776-1800) than anything after about 1808, but even then the last time i was really into this period of history was my freshman year of high school, so i can’t necessarily claim to know what im talking about when it comes to the intricacies of the early American state (as i think is pretty obvious here). Also too lazy to do that much research.

But, here are some notes/snippets etc if you would like. they’re solidly 6 months old now & unedited & largely unresearched, just throwing words on the wall in writing phase one, but whatever

#oooo that’s a lot of words to just say ‘im lazy & self-conscious of the fact i don’t know what im talking about’ #thanks for the ask ily ❤️🥺 #i think you know more about This period of history than i do so honestly we should chat #OMG ice saying i love you & maverick hasn’t even died yet whoa #ice goes to yale instead of the academy. yale guy. ☹️ #pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #top gun #top gun maverick #icemav #asks #top gun fanfiction #if someone wants to pick up this idea & do it please do #not feeling very articulate with my not-fiction words today; sorry if this post is incomprehensible

[arthur-r]

would it be ridiculous to major in classics

#here at lincoln it would probably be a little ridiculous since the official program title is classics and classical religions #and like. i find religion vaguely interesting as a concept but i don’t want to major in like. jesus and his dad god #i’m aware that since it’s classics it would probably be more like greek and roman gods but that’s still just really not my interests? #it’s just that i keep meeting people and saying yeah i’m planning on being a history major and they’re like oh what era of history?? #what’s your favorite historical period you must have one?? #and i’m just like…. idk dude i’m hoping to spread information on it all not pick a favorite time and only do that? #my focus is more on the distribution of information than which information it is. history is just a good starting point #i do kind of wonder about majoring in something like comparative literature but i don’t know strongly enough if i really want to do library #like comparative literature is a cool major that i’m interested in but it wouldn’t lead very well into museum stuff #and i’m more interested in museums and non-library archives. so it would be kinda dumb to switch to an english major to start out #anyway this is friggin college talk again and i’m really sorry #i’m still gonna tag it and everything and i’m still stressed about it in general but it is entirely on my mind right now #like if you look at my brain 2% is will woods new album 4% is what i should wear today and the other 94% of it is dedicated to college stuff #wait also i’m realizing i never really explained why classics is at all relevant right now i got half way there and then distracted #i think i’ve landed on not wanting to do classics though. but basically i started saying to what era i like i say it’s just art and culture #like what kind of history do i like? oh all of it as long as there’s people there being people #and according to. everyone i’ve talked to. that means ancient rome and nowhere else. so #yeah honestly why would i do that. like. other people friggin exist the world really doesn’t have to be centered around europe #like. latin is cool and everything. but that’s not the rare language i want to be learning can i learn like. nahuatl? purepecha? #do i want to major in mesoamerican history or something. i don’t think that’s a major they would give me #but definitely what i’m getting here is that ancient greece and ancient europe in general is not my interest #like. don’t get me wrong i find medieval history really cool and like. the renaissance and lots of old european painters and composers #but at the end of the day those are things that i think are pretty. not things i want to devote my life to #i think indigenous history might be a good thing to look into. i doubt they have that at this school #it would probably still be in my best interests to get something very broad like history. but idk #anyway i’ve been talking long enough i can shut up now. just. yeah #me. my post. mine. #college talk

[wikagirl]

okay fellas, I'm sorry but I feel the need to get onto my little soapbox here for a bit.

Rant below the cut.

Warnings: discussion the genocide of american natives, WW2 discussions, mentiones of death (repeatedly), mentions of eugenics, gas chambers, hanging, starvation, jim crow laws and general rage at people who downplay horrible events that happened in history because they are "not as bad" as WW2

For context: I'm following a bunch of native american creators on insta because somebody unintentionally sent me down a rabbit hole and one of them made a post mourning the lives lost to the strategic erasure of their culture since the Europeans first stepped foot on the american continent. They described it as the native holocaust.

Some guy seemed genuinely confused about the use of the word holocaust so I thought I'd be nice and clear up some confusion about it and left it at that HOWEVER when I brought it up later with friends in discord because I thought it was kinda silly how mad the dude got over it in later comments I came to realize that a lot of people don't actually know what the word means and, especially white americans, seem to get really pissed off when the word is "misused" and now here we are.

So, just to be clear: It does NOT mean death by fire in german. I have no idea where everyone gets that from because it's not even a German word. Death by fire is Feuertod in german and, considering that a lot more people in ww2 died through gas chambers, hanging, starvation, sickness and gunfire using a word meaning "death by fire" would be completely and utterly wrong.

It's true that the greek word it stems from, holókauston, is put together out of holos (whole) and kaustós (burnt) but even then it still does not mean death by fire, it means a sacrifice that was wholly burnt which is why we use the term for events such as the ones of WW2 in a metaphorical sense. It was a great (as in big) intentionally made "sacrifice" that (almost) wholly "burnt" away a whole group of people and I'm putting sacrifice in "-" so nobody gets the wrong idea here. It wasn't a sacrifice, a sacrifice is something you make in honor of something like a god or a cause, it was government funded massmurder.

For reference, here is the wikipedia on the term.

What holocaust the modern word DOES mean is destruction or slaughter of human life on a mass scale through various means which include fire depending on what dictionary you look at.

For reference, here is what is says in the Duden in German and for the English folks the definition from the Cambridge dictionary just to make 100% sure everyone is on the same page here.

The reason for why we call the events of WW2 THE holocaust is because, thus far, it was the most extreme case in human history in meticulously planned execution and a (considering the death toll) extremely short time span. For that it is THE holocaust as in the biggest most extreme but that does not mean that there can't be other instances of one happening and that events that had been labeled as one previously before ww2 suddenly aren't one anymore and as much as we all like to believe that humanity has learned its lesson deep down we all know that is not the case and it's only a matter of time before something worse happens.

"Oh but Wiika, events change the meanings of words” Yes, but I honestly believe that this one word, the one word we have to describe man made horror beyond the comprehension of the average mind, should not be gatekept and exclusive to one event.

Claiming what is happening to native american folks is not a holocaust and "just a massacre that happened x amount of years ago" to me is denial of history and denial of the more than 13 million lives lost on the side of the natives alone as estimated by this paper on page 7 that I have seen cited as a source repeatedly while looking up the topic on the webpages of several reservations and articles on the topic so I'll trust that they check their sources more thoroughly than I do.

For reference, if we sum up the numbers given in the chart under "Number of deaths" from the United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum (and yes I picked an english source just for you, also to be clear we are only looking at the victims that were civilians/not soldiers and people that were imprisoned/qualified to be send to a KZ which is literally everyone else on that list) and pick the higher number for the Roma we get a number that looks a little something like 18.933.900 and taking into account the two shadows numbers we can pump that up to 19 million and still probably miss a few thousand.

Again, side by side. WW2 19 million in total. The natives of america 13 million. That is a difference of 6 million and at this point I would like to remind you that the killing and erasure of natives is still ongoing meaning that the number keeps going up and we also have a huge shadow number that is probably also in the thousands of kids that had been taken to be "cultured" and never were heard of again and kidnappings and killings that are being skillfully ignored by law enforcement and also just murders that happened in the past that we probably never heard of and also probably never will.

I know that the number of 19 million came to be within six years and the 13 million over the span from 1492 until this paper was first published in 2018 and I know that the timespan and how quickly things happened in WW2 are part of what makes it so disturbing to many people but it should not overshadow the fact that these are human lives lost to a system designed to erase them in both cases.

We should not be standing here and saying one of these things is less bad than the other because it took longer to achieve such a high number of deaths or because the total of deaths is lower. Millions are still millions. Most people can't even imagine what a few thousand people would look like in one open space. Now try and fathom literally millions of people as an image in your head, all dead.

Also, as a little side tangent: I know americans have a bit of a hard on for WW2 media and such because it makes them feel like the hero because they came and swooped in and killed the evil nazis BUT what a lot of folk like to ignore in the favour of the illusion of being a hero is that a lot of hitlers ideas and systems were inspired by what was going on in northern america. The KZs were inspired by the US Indian reservation system. The whole "blood purity" law that forced people to proof that they are "only to a certain percent jewish" or else they be sent to work and extermination camps was inspired by Margaret Higgins Sanger and her eugenics theories and don't even get me started on the Jim Crow laws that directly inspired a lot of anti-jewish laws that were going on back then.

To sum up my whole point with this long ass rant:

Please for fucks sake stop telling people that a massacre, especially against their own people, does not count as a holocaust because there has been "a bigger one".

Don't take away the one word we have to accurately describe the man made horrors and crimes committed against human life because you think a different event in time is more deserving of it. To do so is to deny what happened in its true extent and that is nothing but disrespectful to the lives that have been lost.

You can't just say that one of the two is less horrible than the other, both have aspects that are terrifying to them, some more and some less, but the second you say "I think that x event is less bad than y event" that implies that one of the two is more....excusable?

The two events mentioned above are clearly not the same, they never will be and they never should be treated as such and they never ever EVER should be treated as if they are in competition about which one of them is worse or is deserving of a title.

I merely brought them both up to put into perspective what some people are willing to excuse and even completely disregard because they feel like something else is more deserving of the label of "destruction or slaughter of human life on a mass scale" and thus completely disregard literally 531 and still counting years worth of bloodshed and abuse as nothing more than a minor hiccup in the history of the glorious land of the free the way that they always do with anything that throws a shadow on that not USA exclusive american dream considering that Canada is literally just maple syrup flavoured USA when it comes to this topic specifically.

Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.

#tw ww2 #tw death #tw violence #tw murder #tw eugenics #tw holocaust #mention of death #mention of eugenics #if we counted ALL the victims of ww2 including soldiers. rebels and people who died after the end of the war to things caused by the war #such as disability. infected wounds and the countless healthissues the freed KZ inmates had as a result of their time in the camps #we would have more than 70 million dead bodies summed up from all sides of the war #also please for fucks sake stop telling me as a german how I'm supposed to feel about ww2 or that I'm uneducated about it #ww2 is literally the only topic we do in history class from year 7 and onward #so sometimes up to 6 years of only ww2 and we are thorough with it too and considering how a lot of americans talk about the horrors #that happened in that time period I honestly think that they are the ones who don't know what they are talking about #a lot of folks outside of germany never even heard about the blood purity laws or the arian breeding programms #literally all of the shit I listed in here are things that were drilled into my brain in history class #I only looked things up to fact check so I don't misremember. This is basic history knowledge that is expected of german kids. #I've been told that i was a liar before because of what I mentioned earlier about where hitler got his inspo from #and to those people I say fuck you because since then I have actually bought and read his book and it's literally all in there #yes that book #and yes it's back on store shelves with editors notes and context markers and all that good stuff #and I honestly think it should be read in schools or at least snippets of it should be what all this insanity is built upon #actually our history teacher in 9th grade made us read bits of it even when it wasn't part of the curriculum #that woman trained us to sniff out nazi propaganda methods like blood hounds #and it's disturbing to see how much of these methods are currently being used in US government campaigns #shout out to mrs curtis for being the best history and english teacher I've ever had #can't wait to once again have the good old “white saviour syndrome” be tossed at me #but honestly I'm just so fed up with people downplaying events because ww2 was worse #they do it with the russia-ukranie situation rn and even bfore that they did it with gulags which are often used a joke

[nevertheless-moving]

unable to stop dwelling on the discworld trouser leg of time where, in the penultimate fight scene in Nightwatch, Carcer manages to kill teenage Sam Vimes.

Which means that the future that Duke Vimes came from can no longer exist, which means he can’t go home. Meanwhile you’ve got a bunch of history monks with stored up temporal energy, a prepared space outside of time, and the need to do some desperate damage control before the Auditors get involved. Death shows up, reality is unweaving, Sam is reading Carcer his discworld miranda rights because what else is he supposed to do.

and finally, with little other option, the monks de-age Sam so he fits the time period and send him back out into the fray.

(they didn't call it deageing of course. His memory is hazy, splintered during that terrible in between moment, They....took the time out of him? Sanded away the edges of his self for a terrible, workable fit? It...wasn't a good feeling.)

Just—damn. Sam Vimes having to live his whole crapsack life over again, but this time as his disillusioned-reillusioned, unwillingly-character-developed, noir-epic, Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes self. 

Younger (Older? He's never felt so Old, His steps so Childlike, reality twisting in his gut like one of Dibbler's pies) Sam Vimes walking around in a haze after the revolution. Desperate to go home, knowing he can’t. Wanting to drink. Knowing he can’t.

The whole precinct feels pity, he really took Keel’s death hard, hardly speaks except to do his job. Eventually he has to grit his teeth and start being present, because what else is there to do?

Resists the urge to drink until Colon takes the whole watch out to celebrate because -he’s going to be a father!

Come on Sammy, one drink won’t kill you— and after the first drink he’s cracking jokes and after the second hes smiling and after the third hes honestly the life of the party and sometime after that he’s crying about how he was going to be a father and my wife would be ashamed if she saw me drinking like this and— 

Oh shit, Did anyone else know he had a wife?? A PREGNANT wife??? What—aren’t you like 12—no you're 17 now aren't you but when did—

You guys n’ver met ’er—oh gods none if you ev’n know ‘er, is jus’ me...

What—when did you lose—

I lost her the same damn day I los’ ev’rythin else, whadya think...bleeding Carcer...the fuckin revolution...

So! That! Sam only vaguely remembers the night, but rumors travel faster than light on the disc, so by the next day the whole damn city knows about poor Sam brung low by the loss of his poor, tragic, pregnant wife, so young to be a widower, and the Seamstresses nod because they already knew, don’t ask them how, somethings you just have to know in that trade.

And his mother—I don’t know, sue me, I’m a time travel fiend but there’s something deeply intriguing about a man meeting his dead parent, who is somewhat younger than him, and stepping into the old relationship like a badly fitting thing that's supposed to fit well. She would know, right? How would she deal with her son’s impossible grief? Maybe she wouldn’t know—he spent most of the time out of the house, running with different street gangs, maybe he avoids her until she dies and lives with the guilt twice over. God, we don’t even know her name. There’s just so much narrative and emotional potential that I don’t even know where to start.

When he’s on duty, which is most time - it’s agonizing because at first he remembers cases, saves lives that would have been lost. But the more time passes, the hazier his memory because in the original timeline he was becoming an alcoholic. Fuck! A kid dies and he could have saved her if he hadn’t been such a drunk, if he had just remembered where the asshole lived, but it’s all a haze, and he wants to drown out his guilt, but that’s what caused this in the first place.

Good young Sammy, who spends his rare off-time in dusty libraries (and yes, the irony that he’s apparently Carrot now is not lost on him) reading gods-only-know.

It’s not like he can ask the wizards for help, cutthroat and vicious as they are now in the not-so-distant-past.

Good young Sam, who...talks to the Broken Drum’s pet Bouncer like he’s a real person and not a dumb rock? That’s a bit weird, but he’s a bit of a funny guy.

Good old Sam, who believed the testimony of the dwarf who said the humans were trying to rob him and let the dwarf go??

the PROBLEMS this man would cause, good grief. Can you imagine a moderately progressive middle aged man with some degree of begrudging diversity and equity training that he did, for all his sins, pay attention to, suddenly going back to like, 1990, going back just 30 years, and going...oh damn this is kind of fucked up, no man you can’t say that, holy shit.

Except Sam’s lived through even more rapidly shifting social moroes! There’s no seamstress guild, there’s no women allowed inside the university, there’s no black ribboner’s society. People hunted trolls for their teeth! But Sam can’t just unlearn everything, and he can’t shut up, and he has no real luck and anyway he would absolutely get himself (temporarily) fired.

FUCK. Sam has no idea what to do with that. None. Zero clue. Wanders around in a haze until that dwarf he saved from police brutality finds him and insists on repaying the debt. No, he insists, do you have any idea what debt means to a dwarf?

“Sort-of?” he replies hesitantly, and that honest admission of incomplete knowledge shows a hell of a lot more respect and understanding than any self proclaimed dwarf-expert ever did.

Gets a job as a surface man, hauling rocks into the city. It’s backbreaking work, but, in true Discworld fashion, it’s also one hell of a workout (again the irony of being Carrot is not lost him. he freezes for a minute while hauling a rock cart, when he remembers he's technically Lost Nobility too, in a strict sense, but someone curses at him in the street and he's comfortingly grounded)

And here is where this au slides into a SPECTACULAR romantic comedy, BEAR WITH ME. Because in his time on the Watch he’s already done noir, action adventure, war story, detective who dunnit, psychological horror, but guards guards only allowed him to be a romance protagonist in an extremely limited context.

Give me righteous, twenty-something-looking, can’t-say-he-doesn’t-have-style, young Sam Vimes, not an alcoholic,  being fed three square meals a day by his dwarven forced found family, hauling rocks. He is startled to find him bumping his head on a low hanging bar that he doesn’t think used to be there, eventually realizing that he’s an inch or two taller than he remembers. Huh. Guess all that bearhuggers really did stunt his growth.

Still doesn’t get what some of the looks from women he’s getting are about, sure, he’s dirty but so is everyone else. Fine, he took his shirt off, but it’s hot out, there’s far wrinklier than him hauling heavy loads, get a life. 

Happens to glance in the Ankh one day when it’s particularly slow and shiny and is startled to realize that he might be turning heads for a different reason. Oh. Right, not that he was ever a heartbreaker, but he did alright for himself... when he was a younger and his face hadn’t been broken so many times. Which...it isn't now.

Is mildly disturbed by the revelation.

Especially once things blow over at the precinct and what with high mortality rates, he ends up with getting hired again. The boys are delighted to have him back, nevermind that he’s an odd one, noone is ever quite in your corner like Vimsey, absence makes the heart fonder, no one else works that hard, and he’s not even competition for promotion. All around great guy, we should set him up with somebody and just, no.

It just keeps getting worse! He’s literate! He’s a feminist! He believes abuse victims! He’s got a tragic backstory! He’s unreasonably good in a fistfight! He’s kind to animals! Word gets around that there’s a good man on the watch and he’s just waiting for a good woman to come snap him up. The widower excuse doesn’t hold people off completely, and for some it’s its own sort-of appeal. 

Things REALLY become stressful after he rescues that carriage full of noblewoman.

What’s he supposed to do? Let them get robbed? Or worse? Chasing down and beating up 10 goons is as easy as beating up one, when they’re that stupid, getting separated like that, drunk and distracted, and he knows these streets better than anyone, really it’s nothing. And oh lord he’s Modest too.

I mean, they were genuinely greatful, as genuine as people like that are capable of being, the skill having grown rusty. And then there is something...magnetic about the man. An air of command.

So, soon enough you get Lady Marigold of Marigrave calling on Treckle Road for that gallant young officer who rescued them, she really needs to thank him. And Viscountess Elanor Thitzferal specifically requesting that he guard her at her next soiree. And Baroness Julieta van Shoeholten insisting that he come to her home while her husband’s away, for... manly protection.

Aaaah just zero sympathy from the guys. None. 'It’s become a competition, they’re just trying to see who can get me into bed first, it’s like I’m a piece of meat, you can’t send me sir, the Marquess greeted me in a nightee last time you made me go to—' and 'small gods Vimes are you even listening to yourself, shut the hell up'.

Simultaneous to this, (again this is several years into the timeline) swamp dragon accessories come into style. Which means abandoned swamp dragons scrounging on the street. Vimes takes one back to his apartment, blows his paycheck on dragon medicine, and eventually, heart in his chest, brings it to the Ramkin estate. The sunshine orphanage doesn’t even exist yet and he’s just standing outside the gates like an idiot, what is he thinking. Turns around, but her carriage is pulling up and—

well. they meet. it's cute. he's never felt so young. he's never felt so old, too old for her, too poor—

and certainly her thoughts linger too long on the awkward, kindly, handsome young commoner, but is it any wonder she doesn't quite connect it to the stern, dangerous, sexy young guard the ladies seem to be in some quiet, cuthroat competition over?

i have this gorgeous, absurd scene in my head in which Vimes is strong armed into standing guard at some high society soiree and one of the pushiest ladies insists he dance with here, or, if he prefers, if he's not confident about his skills, he can dance with her in-private at her home and he’s like [grinding teeth, looking for a way out, seeinf one] “I would be honored to dance with you.”

Steps right into some ultra-complex dance with multiple partner swaps (she never thought he'd pick this one, devilishly intimidating to one not strictly trained, and you barely spend anytime with your first partner).

But he does alright. Better than alright, for a common man, sometimes misstepping but his hands and feet always end up where they need to be. Raises several eyebrows part way into the song because he's throuwing in some slightly scandalous, no innovative, extra lifts and twirls that wouldn't become fashionable for another decade or two. Who even is that guy? Some out of towner? No, no he's in a guards uniform...how very strange.

Gets to Sybll and she's used to embarrassment during these dances, she tries to get out of them when she can... but can't always. Men awkwardly skipping the lifts, or worse, trying and failing. But him — oh it's him, the one who helped little Erold, and looked at her like—like—well like she was someone beautiful. And he's doing it again, and he's strong and there's a quiet moment where she's in the air, they lock eyes, and the rest of the room melts away.

And then the partners change again, the moment ended.

Just...living throught it all again. To the left, a dance he almost knows the steps to, throwing others off balance with erratic moves , honest mistakes, and delibrate stepping on toes. Improvising. Ruining. Improving. Getting far, far too much attention.

Hes almost excited when the first assassains start coming after him. It's like a hobby.

Everyone tells him he should get a hobby.

Interactions with young vetinari...I don't have the energy to write it all down, the slow circling in on each other, both burning with the need to fix the city, save it, their city.

needless to say he ends up fired again, life under real threat after offending some high lord.

Conveniently enough he has an employment opportunity- bodyguard to fucking Vetinari on his 'grand sneer.' The bastard knows vimes isn't what he seems, though sam is pretty sure that he doesnt know the exacts.

Vetinari hypothesis:(the ghost of keel? Keels son, with some hereditary curse? Or a larger spirit of justice possessing a string of unrelated souls? He knows things he shouldn't- mind reader? Fortune teller? Havelock once arranged for a wizard to bump into him on the street, the magical fool gave an odd double look and then muttered something about destiny looping in on itself giving him a headache. Destiny? Lost noble? And hes far too familiar with sybyl, one of the few bearable noblewomen in this city. And his thoughts on guilds, when havelock can trip him into speaking... Most of all, if hes reading him at all correctly (for all the mystery hes not that hard to read, unless thats a very clever cover) then it seems that behind those dark haunted eyes is Respect. Loyalty. For vetinari. What an interesting man. A puzzling asset. An intriguing threat. )

Did I mention the timeline is changing, healing slowly around the place where it was torn? Healing enough around scars to perhaps get some flexibility back, with some painful stretches and...massaging of said scar tissue?

And hes heading to unresting uberwald, a place where a werewolf pack still hunts humans and, truely unrelated but perhaps equally exhausting, an eldritch spirit of vengeance just might be looking to stretch its legs in a hapless vessel?

Opening drabble Vimes Vetinari Meta (Unwell)

#discworld #sam vimes #discworld au #nightwatch au #i literally drafted this post in December 2021 #and i know it was living in my head for years already at that point #i have more somewhere aging like cheese in the back of my mind #discworld fanfic #night watch #Let this be free from my mind #Perhaps someone else will write it #BE FREE ANCIENT AU OF MY SOUL #For all my obsession with discworld I have but this one (1) AU though it tears at me like the seam of a pair of pants #The songs I have permanently associated with this au are slightly bonkers by the way #My au #Seriously there's like two full novels worth of content up here. Sybyll running away from home and living as a commoner #To mirror Sam joining upper class in original timeline you see? #Some early discworld murder Wizard nonsense when they try to poke at the temporal anomaly and the universe goes brrrr #Eventually catching up with color of Magic city burning bs and vimes is mad as fuck #Weird year that never was protecting people during sourcery #And when we start catching up with where he left #Oh ho ho you can't to forward to something that doesn't exist but maybe you can go sideways to a place that's got a tear in it #A sam vimes shaped tear #And his pregnant wife from 30 years ago in the other trouser leg #AND that's not even mentioning how carcers trial got taken to a...higher court

[kanansdume]

I've recently been watching these very interesting Star Wars video essays on YouTube (yeah I know, a rare breed) and it brings up these comments Lucas has made about how he views Star Wars as almost like a silent film in terms of how important the visuals are to him in comparison to the dialogue. But this essay also points out how important Lucas finds all of the "rhyming" moments in his trilogies and the way he utilizes them to remind you of something else for emotional or thematic reasons. And there's so many of them, both in visuals and in dialogue, and it's interesting to consider how important this is to him, the repetition for a purpose as well as the storytelling through visuals above everything else and then to look at Star Wars since the Prequels came out and realize how little has really been able to match up to those ideals since then.

The ONLY thing that's come out since the Prequels that I think really hits these two things the same way is, in fact, Andor. One of the things I noticed about the way people discussed Andor as it was airing in a way I haven't really seen for any of the other shows or films was the visual SYMBOLOGY. So many times I saw people noticing the Imperial cog everywhere, from the aerial shot of Narkina 5 as the prisoners escape to the architecture of Mon Mothma's house. There were people picking up on the use of items in Luthen's shop that are familiar from other things to give this idea that Luthen is from another time, he's attempting to preserve this world he lost, that if you're not looking closely enough you won't notice what he's really saying or doing with this shop. The color choices for the different locations and people got analyzed because the people involved spoke about how they intentionally utilized color to SEND A MESSAGE about the characters and the world. We know that the people who made the costumes and sets really worked hard to treat Star Wars almost like a period drama and study the history of the franchise as if it were a real place so that the things they came up with felt like they belonged in this world everyone knows so well even if it's completely new. And of course there were all of the myriad references to things from Rogue One, the constant repetition of "climb", the sunset on the beach, etc.

Nearly EVERY SHOT in this show was created with so much intention behind it in order to say something meaningful about the characters, the world, this specific story they're in, and the overall saga of Star Wars itself. It's insane how much greater impact this show was able to achieve through the incredibly careful usage of visual symbols and thematic repetitions, much like Lucas did before them. It feels like they didn't just study the history of the galaxy far far away, but they studied the history of STAR WARS and what Lucas was trying to do and say with this story. They peeled back his onion a bit more and were able to create something that really has that same visual feel even when it's not created for a child audience. It also is experimenting with its narrative style through its structure and through Cassian's character being allowed to be somewhat more reactive than proactive, and while that didn't work for everyone, it does feel like it's following in Lucas's footsteps of experimentation through Star Wars. Push the boundaries of what Star Wars is and can be and what you can say with it.

But this only works because they peeled the onion back enough to TRULY understand all of the messages Lucas was sending with it. They got the heart of Star Wars and despite its lack of space wizards, despite the lack of most major characters in the Saga, this was a show that honestly got the message more than just about anything else Star Wars has put out since the Prequels. The choices between selflessness and selfishness, the themes about how you always HAVE to make a choice even when it feels like you don't have any (sometimes ESPECIALLY when it feels like you don't have any), and how important it is to make sure to choose the path of compassion above everything else. The themes of connection to others, the symbiotic circle and the impact even the smallest person can have on world around them, it's RIGHT THERE and it's CENTRAL to Andor's storyline.

So yes, it experiments a little with narrative structure, but it's possibly the most Star Wars thing to exist Revenge of the Sith because it honestly truly GETS what Star Wars was about, both in its themes and in its filmmaking. A lot of people said that Andor didn't feel like Star Wars to them, usually because of the lack of space wizards and the fact that it's not a story aimed at children. But to me, Andor is EXACTLY what Star Wars is and has always been. They're stretching the boundaries of what Star Wars can be, but it's saying the exact same things Star Wars has always said, it's just saying it slightly differently. This doesn't feel like fanfiction to me, not really. Unlike things like the Mandoverse or the books, Andor isn't just taking some of the toys out of the sandbox and going to play with them somewhere else. Andor is IN that sandbox. It's building a slightly different sandcastle, but it's still within the sandbox, using the same sand that Lucas did.

#star wars #andor #star wars andor #i GET why some people feel like andor isn't star wars #but quite honestly that feels like not just a superficial reading of andor but a superficial reading of star wars as a whole #the only other show to come anywhere near andor's level was the obi-wan kenobi show #there's tons of visuals that are intended to link back to both the pt and the ot #from obi-wan and leia's costumes to things like the fire obi-wan is burned in and that flashback scene #i'm placing andor above owk still because i think andor takes it an extra level higher but owk is also in that sandbox #owk just got stuck with the fucking volume and the disadvantage of going from a movie to a miniseries #but it did far better with those disadvantages than just about anyone else and still told a VERY star wars style story #the fact that it feels like the prequels is exactly why everyone hated it #and it's exactly why i loved it and think it's the 2nd best thing to come out of star wars since rots #i'll give 3rd place to rebels since it tries once or twice to do some visual and dialogue repetition #but those kinds of things aren't something i see analyzed about rebels all that much tbh #everything else is just fanfic that made a profit #some of it is really BAD fanfic that thinks a cameo is the same as a visual motif. it's not. they suck. stop doing them.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Did you Know

Mammal bias isn't the only one when it comes to researching nature and deep time?

There are more!

There is also time bias! As I have discussed with @quark-nova, Essentially, because the more recent something is the easier it is to learn about - more remains of things, more details from the rocks, etc. - we also have ridiculous amounts of bias towards more recent times. This is clearest when it comes to the traditional geologic time scale - the further back you go, the longer time periods are, and nothing is divided particularly evenly. I would even say the "anthropocene" is the biggest offender in this - if we zoomed out from today to a hundred million years ago, all of the extinctions and chaos of the past 2.5 million years would get lumped together into one big mass extinction, not separated out into nitty gritty and frankly narcissistic time slices.

Then there is geographical bias! You'd think people studying the whole biosphere wouldn't have this, but we do! Thanks to *colonialism!* The geologies of North America and Europe are significantly better studied than the rest of the world, which is fighting hard to catch up. This even extends to our knowledge of modern life, with many new species still being discovered in "the global south" (I personally prefer the term Gondwana, but what can you do). And we have no one to blame for that but ourselves.

And another one is land bias! Because we are land organisms, we tend to think about land ecosystems more than oceanic ones - in fact, the ocean only really gets enough time on it in the early stages of life, everything before the Silurian, because there isn't a land ecosystem to focus on more! But the oceans are just as influential in our past - honestly, moreso - than land ecosystems, even today - think about how much El Niño affects us all! But how many people know about the end cretaceous extinction, and not the mesozoic marine revolution? How many people know that reefs at the end Cretaceous were just, made by bivalves for some reason? The list goes on.

Then there's the one most people know about already - megafaunal and charismatic bias! This often goes hand in hand with mammal bias, but essentially, because we ourselves are megafauna - I know we specifically define megafauna to exclude humans, but how the hell is that logical - we operate on a big scale, at any rate - we tend to favor megafauna in our knowledge of the past and our understanding of life. And, if its not megafauna, it at least has to be charismatic - cute, extra weird maybe, or familiar. This affects modern research so much, especially conservation and research funding - not just paleo, but also neontological work. Charismatic Megafauna get everything, and everyone else gets scraps.

This is just the tip of the iceberg! All scientists bring in bias - that's why we need as many scientists as possible, so we have as many perspectives as possible to come up with the most parsimonious and universal view of nature - but some biases are fairly universal for humans and need to be murdered in our heads by all of us. Why did Wingspan and Holotype both start with North America when the best birds are in South America and the best fossil dinosaurs are in Asia? The list is infinite.

The biases we have because of the way history has played out, the way preservation works, and because of what kind of organisms we are as humans, are ones we all have to work to disassemble and deconstruct in our brains. The more we do so, the more we can look at the big picture, understand our entire biosphere, and work together to protect it.

Plus, imagine how much cool stuff we'll learn about when we finally take the time to do so.

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

#mammal bias #time bias #land bias #charismatic megafauna #geographical bias #palaeoblr #paleoblr

[olderthannetfic]

I was an undiagnosed autistic until after I graduated, so for a long time I had a lot of difficulty making friends, particularly in IRL spaces. By the time I was 16 literally every friend I had was online, and since the adults in my life weren't ideal, this online group was really the only support group I had. Unfortunately they were all antis, but they were never the aggressive kind, and I wasn't very well versed in anti/pro discourse at the time anyways, so I just dealt with it. I'd have fun with "problematic" stuff quietly and in private, and everything was alright.

At some point I came across a group of more aggressive antis, and the way that they treated artists in our shared fandom that they didn't like was so jarring to me. I ended up getting into it with them and they held a grudge against me for a long time after that, following and harassing me even after I cut ties and went on with my life with my original friend group. They just would not leave me alone no matter how much time had passed. I'd never seen that before and just tried to ignore them, but fuck were they persistent.

I'd been dealing with a lot more stress after this started, from a wide variety of IRL issues, and aside from not knowing I was autistic, I was also dealing with a lot of other random mental problems that I still don't really fully understand. I think all the stress in my life, from a lot of horrible things that I honestly think I might have PTSD from now, put me into some kind of paranoid mental break. I started behaving really erratically, very publicly. I know it was obvious because I'd constantly get concerned messages asking if I'm okay. People knew I was going through a lot and that I wasn't mentally stable.

With all that being said, this group of antis LOVED seeing me like this. It didn't matter what I was dealing with, that it was destroying my mental health. They had a grudge over some petty fiction stuff, were still upset that I told them off for harassing random people, and they used this fragile period of time for me to amp up their harassment and stalking. I started losing friends I'd trusted for reasons I couldn't understand, and it turned out they'd been telling them I wasn't trustworthy and that they should cut contact. They thought it was so much fun to feed into my pre-existing issues and make things worse.

I don't mean to trauma-dump or anything, so sorry if this is too heavy, but my point is that antis do not and will never care about how much they hurt someone, and that it's likely the entire point to begin with. Even the friends that supported me at the start ended up turning against me once I became too much of a social hazard to associate with. Even the ones who seemed like more "rational" antis, who never went out of their way to hurt anybody. They all turned out to be the same and it never made any difference what our history was or how important they knew they were to me.

It's not worth it to stay. It's never worth it to stay with people like that. Even to this day I'm amazed at how horribly these experiences affected me in the long-term. I go to therapy and end up talking about this period of time more than anything that happened during my childhood. Lots of people I trusted decided I wasn't worth the risk, not even because of anything I did, but just because I said harassment wasn't okay, and because I wasn't in a healthy state of mind. They saw my stress and paranoia and thought "Well, this isn't someone worth helping. People already don't like them. I don't want to throw away my social life for that." All over fiction. I still can't make friends anymore, this destroyed my ability to trust people. The isolation isn't worth the short-term friendships.

Everyone deserves better than that. If somebody is friends with antis... just leave. Trust me. Just get out.

--

What bullies want most is for you to cry in public.

We might not like to admit it, but deep in the core of many people is a seed of sadistic delight in public humiliation, and not the fun kind you do with consenting partners. When people feel small, when they lack control, when their real enemies are faceless or unreachable, they want something soft and defenseless and small to hurt.

Re your "friends", most people are cowards when it comes down to it.

The ones that aren't are 1. going to get harassed too and 2. are the sort of people who walk into that on purpose, which often means they're pretty confrontational and aggressive the rest of the time. Look at the life of any great activist whom we all thank from afar for what they did for our community... and you will often find a person who's not an easy or calm friend day to day. Not always, but not infrequently.

My actual friend friends that I can rely on are not only older but also usually out of the reach of the sort of people who send me death threats. I don't generally reveal their fandom names on here because it would bring a lot of nuisance down on their heads. (And, tbh, a lot of them are quasi-lurkers anyway.) The Fandom Olds you'll see openly associating with me on Tumblr generally have a cast iron stomach for wank and either like fighting or just find all the combatants so pathetically irrelevant that nothing's going to get through to them emotionally.

Antis do suck, but if you look at any sort of big fandom drama or even offline bullying, you'll see that many people will quietly slither away when the public ostracism of their "friend" gets too much. It's sadly not a property unique to antis.

Most would like to think of themselves as that fictional hero they love who stands up for the downtrodden no matter what the cost. Most are lying to themselves.

It doesn't stop me from being friendly to new people, but yes, I absolutely assume they will fold like wet tissue at the first sign of trouble, especially if I only know them online. They're not all mean people, just weak.

But yes, avoiding people such as antis who've openly told you they're hypocritical cowards with bad values is a step in the right direction.

[akookminsupporter]

Hey Rosie, so i did a thing a decided to visit some taekook blogs to just read some of their theories to see if i could understand where they are coming from because no matter how hard i think about things, i just can’t for the life of me understand why someone will honestly still ship taekook in 2024 and even after watching everything Jikook have done for and to each other in years and when i tell you i lost braincells, believe me i did.

I’m one person who believes that people should be free to believe in what they want to as long as they are not being dismissive of other members bonds but i realized that, that is literally the only way taekookers cope. They are blatantly dismissive of Jk’s bond with Jimin and only acknowledge it when it comes to moments they cannot argue and then the want to play the “they are bestfriends so it’s normal” card even though just right before that, they were claiming how Jk arrived Yoongi’s concert and ignored Jimin. How can u say this and then when someone brings something which obviously shows how Jk cares about Jimin you are back to claiming that they are bestfriends even though you think Jk will arrive a concert and ignore his bestfriend just because he wants to cling to his “boyfriend”? Make it make sense.

I know that in the last years, jikook spaces have gotten really toxic and some jikookers are becoming as delulu as tkkrs but i will always thank God for the handful of sane jikookers we still have because trust me when i tell you that there is not a SINGLE sane taekooker in this world. All of them have either been brainwashed or are plain stupid. For the most part, most jikookers pay attention to facts to try to make sense of jikook. Yes we do have our theories but you don’t see Jikookers sticking to their theories as proof of the damn ship but this is the opposite for taekookers. They actually don’t care about the facts. They don’t care about what the boys have to say or what has actually happened all these years. They only care about their own interpretation of the boys actions and words.

You wouldn’t hear them bringing up tangible reasons as to why they think their ship is real. They will bring up reasons like the fact that taekook wore the same shirt on the same day and same time even though they were in different continents💀. They will bring up things like hearing taekook’s voices in each other’s Lives and the only proof they have for this are the voices in their heads.

I am one of those who believes that Jikook sometimes hide in each other’s Lives but i don’t believe this just because i see them look to a certain direction for 3 seconds or because i hear a random sound. My belief is backed up by the fact that we literally have evidence which has been consistent for over a decade which points to the fact that Jimin and Jk are the two who spend the most of their nigts together. I didn’t come to this conclusion by imagining that they do, i came to this conclusion because they have literally told us this so many damn times. So if i hear a voice or feel like someone else is in Jimin or Jk’s room at some odd hour, i am more inclined to think it is Jimin or Jk rather than anyone else because those two have a history of being in each other’s rooms the most, you get? It is the same as, if someone has a reputation of being a theif, if something gets missing everyone will most likely look to them first before anyone else.

Another thing that is really weird to me about taekookers is how they blatantly ignore everything we have witnessed Jikook do for years and then they hype up taekook doing some of those things for a 6 months period. This entire fandom has seen Jikook arrive and leave so many places together for years with or without tae present. We know that Jk has hung out with Jimin and his friends for years. Infact we saw Jk with Jm’s friends way b4 anyone ever dreamed of Jk hanging out with Tae’s wooga but when Jk did all these things with Jimin, it didn’t matter and it meant nothing but now, some of them consider it irrefutable proof that taekook is real because Taekook arrived and left a concert together ONCE in 10 years and because for the first time in a decade, Jk was seen hanging out with Tae and his friends for a period of time. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

Do you remember those days when taekookers used to swear that Jikook hanging out alot outside of work was proof that they weren’t real because according to them, no closeted couple in a homophobic country will expose themselves so much? Remember when JM and Jk sharing cars was fanservice? Remember how they downplayed Jk’s lives about JM in chapter two because it was “official content” but were praying Jk did the same for tae and when that didn’t happen, they switched their narrative to “Jk was forced” or “Jm needed promotion while tae didn’t”. I honestly don’t understand how they even make sense to themselves. Ask them why they think Jk and tae are a couple when there is literally evidence Jk spending birthdays and couple holidays with Jimin and not seeing Tae some times at all and they tell you, Jk and tae have to protect themselves by lying that they don’t. So you mean to tell me that Jk and Tae don’t feel the need to “protect” themselves when they are attending premiers or when tae is namedropping Jk 1783787 times or when Tae is coming to announce that Jk sings him a song but they only feel the need to “protect” themselves when it comes to admitting that they go to greet each other on birthdays?

You see that their entire premise of belief in their ship is making other people the villains in taekook’s lives. The big bad company who constantly separates the boys in camera, constantly forces Jk to do fanservice with Jimin, constantly cuts their moments, Jimin who constantly forces himself on Jk, who doesn’t respect his friends relationships, Jk who is lilly livered and cannot stand up and say no to the money hungry company, Jk who sometimes hurts tae by playing along with the “fanservice” and poor tae tae who has to sit there and take all of this. Poor tae tae who has a terrible soulmate and a boyfriend who cannot fight for him. He is the real victim in all of this. I honestly don’t know how they don’t see how incredibly stupid they sound.

Sorry for the rant.

Anon, thanks for the TED TALK.

Honestly, there is not much I can add. Thanks for taking one for the team and read what las vecinas are saying, you are a stronger person than me because I have never been able to do that. I think two of the key things for that group to stay afloat for so long are:

Not seeing original content.

Living in denial.

And that's why they will always be around, no matter what.

#anon #ask #jkkrs opinion #the subgroup #preg 187

[iwanthermidnightz]

This was a very good article! I loved hearing Kristen’s (and Jodie Fosters) perspective as a queer trailblazer. Inserting some snippets below 🤍

To get to this point, Stewart’s weathered more than a decade of unrelenting media scrutiny, first about her straight relationships, then about her gay ones, as she figured out her own identity. She leveraged her global stardom from the “Twilight” franchise not to become a superhero or a lifestyle guru, but to fuel an astonishing run of acclaimed independent films, including “Clouds of Sils Maria,” “Still Alice,” “Certain Women,” “Personal Shopper” and the Princess Diana drama “Spencer,” for which she earned an Oscar nomination.

“Whenever I hear that she’s doing something new, I’m so curious to see what it is, because it’s going to be a movie that hasn’t been made before,” says Clea DuVall, who directed Stewart in one of her only Hollywood films during this period, Hulu’s 2020 release “Happiest Season,” the first lesbian Christmas rom-com backed by a major studio. “She really is so herself. And I think that’s why so many people respond to her the way they do — because she is so authentic.”

By the time Stewart stepped on the stage of “Saturday Night Live” in February 2017, she’d spent the previous two years trying to convince the press that it was OK to write about her relationships with women, rather than resort to the vexing practice of referring to her girlfriend as her “gal pal.”

“It wasn’t even like I was hiding,” she says. “I was so openly out with my girlfriend for years at that point. I’m like, ‘I’m a pretty knowable person.’”

But even with that posture, the media’s “gal pal” dog whistle triggered a deeper, more painful history of intrusive curiosity about Stewart’s sexual identity. “For so long, I was like, ‘Why are you trying to skewer me? Why are you trying to ruin my life? I’m a kid, and I don’t really know myself well enough yet,’” she says. “The idea of people going, ‘I knew that you were a little queer kid forever.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, you should honestly have seen me fuck my first boyfriend.’”

It’s worth dwelling on this point: For almost the entire history of Hollywood, queer actors dreaded the public discovering who they really were, and that fear kept the closet door firmly closed. “Because I was gay, I really retreated,” says DuVall, who came out publicly in 2016. “Even doing a teeny tiny movie like [the ’90s lesbian cult favorite] ‘But I’m a Cheerleader,’ people immediately were like, ‘She’s gay, how can we out her?’ I wanted to stay small.”

Stewart, though, went big, with a monologue on “SNL” about how President Donald Trump, in 2012, obsessively tweeted about her relationship with Pattinson. “Donald, if you didn’t like me then, you’re really probably not going to like me now, because I’m hosting ‘SNL’ — and I’m, like, so gay, dude,” she said to wild cheers from the audience.

“It was cool to frame it in a funny context because it could say everything without having to sit down and do an interview,” Stewart says before running through the kind of questions queer actors have had to consider before coming out publicly: “‘So what platform is that going to be on? And who’s going to make money on that? And who’s going to be the person that broke it?’ I broke it, alone.”

A few days later, I mention Stewart’s “SNL” monologue to Foster over the phone, and she lets out a big laugh. “I never knew that,” she says. “What a wonderful, funny, wry, modern way to be honest to the world. That’s just awesome.”

As Stewart talks about her “SNL” experience, I think about how no stars of her age and stature ever came out when I was growing up as a gay kid in the 1980s and ’90s. So to have her professional trajectory not skip a beat feels like real progress.

When I tell her as much, she takes the conversation in an unexpected direction. “Because I’m an actor, I want people to like me, and I want certain parts,” she says. “I have lots of different experiences that shape who I am that are very, very far from binary. But I did get good at the heteronormative quality. I play that role well. It comes from a somewhat real place — it’s not fake. But it’s fucked up that if I was gayer, it wouldn’t be the case.”

I try to clarify what she means: “So your career maybe would have suffered after coming out had you not affected a performative femininity …”

“… that I know works to my advantage,” she admits, nodding. “That’s why I’m fucking stoked about ‘Love Lies Bleeding.’”

Stewart didn’t let that scandal, as intense as it was in the moment, stifle her. Instead, she grew to fully embrace her queerness in her public life — like bringing her girlfriend, screenwriter Dylan Meyer, to the Oscars in 2022. “It’s not that I wasn’t scared,” Stewart says. “It was just that there was no other way to live.”

She’s even started to recognize that the most ostensibly heterosexual thing she’s done, “Twilight,” has its own queer sparkle. “I can only see it now,” she says. “I don’t think it necessarily started off that way, but I also think that the fact that I was there at all, it was percolating. It’s such a gay movie. I mean, Jesus Christ, Taylor [Lautner] and Rob and me, and it’s so hidden and not OK. I mean, a Mormon woman wrote this book. It’s all about oppression, about wanting what’s going to destroy you. That’s a very Gothic, gay inclination that I love.”

I ask Stewart if she understands how much her decision to come out has also made her a role model for LGBTQ people. She cackles. “Oh, you have no idea,” she says. “Every single woman that I’ve ever met in my whole life who ever kissed a girl in college is like, ‘Yeah, I mean, me too.’ I’m constantly joking with my girlfriend. I’ll be sitting there and be like” — she whispers — “‘She’s gay too. Everyone’s gay.’”

It can be easy to forget just how rare this still is, a giant movie star living such an openly queer life. “It feels like a generational thing, where I’m watching somebody make the leaps that I didn’t think I could ever do,” Foster says.

After fiercely guarding her privacy for decades, Foster came out publicly at the 2013 Golden Globes, and has just now played her first explicitly gay character in the 2023 biopic “Nyad.” Talking about Stewart has put Foster in a reflective mood. As our call is coming to an end, she offers this unprompted insight: “I get a lot of questions about who I was and what I represented in the industry, and was I — I don’t know …” She exhales. “Was I helpful in terms of representation? I’m sure there’s a 12- or 13- or 14-year-old when I was making movies as a young person who said that I had something to offer to them in their life as a queer person. I had to do it my way. I had pioneers to help the way, who I’m grateful for. And now people can be grateful for Kristen for being the pioneer. I’m just — I’m grateful to her.”

This sense of communion with the wider LGBTQ tribe is why Stewart has dedicated herself to embracing the fullness of who she is as a bro-y, butch-y queer woman in her work as an actor and, come hell or high water, a director.

“I was like, ‘I would like to be on that team because we need each other,’” Stewart says. “I didn’t want to be left out anymore. It was this whole world that I didn’t realize I could explore.”

#loved this! #the queer experience™️

[nereidprinc3ss]

i know we’re all excited for part 4 coming and ofc I don’t want you to get overwhelmed but i was wondering if we could have Spencer’s POV?

in one of the scenarios, he stated that he was in falling in love for reader and it has been noticeable that he has gotten laid with more/other women in the past.

i would like to know more about how was spencer as a lover back in that time like how he felt after s*x and stuff, like a flashback or something and how his relationship with reader has changed him, his own perspective. BUT ofc, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. it’s all good if you choose to ignore this; ily. thanks for always feeding us. we love being your children💗💗

hi love i actually do have headcanons for dybmn!spence’s romantic/sexual history and idk if they’re ever going to fit into that series but i’d be happy to share them here!!

18+ under the cut/season 8 spoilers barely

so basically in my head he loses his virginity to elle greenaway (DUH) and they actually have a little bit of a relationship but the dynamic isn’t quite right because she’s going through all her own shit and at that time of spencer’s life it’s more simple for him. like she’s his first everything and he’s super in love with her but she is older and more experienced and really cares for him but knows for a lot of reasons that this wide eyed rose tinted view he has of her and their idealized relationship is never going to work out. #ILOVEELLEGREENAWAY but anyway they are never exclusive and in the dybmn universe i think he doesn’t necessarily SLEEP w lilah archer but they hook up in that pool beyond just making out mwaha but he’s just a little guy like he’s not CHEATING on elle because they’re not exclusive but she realizes she’s way too into him and that actually ends up figuring into why she leaves the BAU like yes it’s everything with her trauma too but that’s part of it because she knows she can’t sustain that relationship and being much older than him she’s the responsible party so yeah. i also think that time he visits her hotel room was maybe the last time they hooked up

after that i think he kind of develops a pattern of sleeping with women who are older/more experienced than him because he’s just used to being around older people anyway and he feels he can relate to them better and im imagining this is like seasons 2-4 spencer so it’s him and a bunch of hot 30-40 year old women (and probably men) and he’s just like a slut honestly like he’s really easy because he desperately craves affection and validation and i’d say he continues slutting himself out in that way for many seasons, but slowly with people who are more his age, probably until like around season 8 when he meets maeve and then all that shit happens and he kinda is just not into sex or romance for a long while. and i think after that he occasionally will hook up w someone but his main slut era was like seasons 2-6. (it slowed down when his migraines started but did not stop because he’s unstoppable) (he also may have had an actual relationship during this season 7 period in my mind. idk why i just sense there was someone before maeve. no i will not be providing reasoning season 7 spencer just looks like he has a girlfriend)

anyway. the number of bodies that man has is unknown. it may be a number so high we can’t conceive of it. he’s a capital doubleyew Whore unfortunately. but he’s rlly reigned it in by the time he meets reader which can be whenever you want but i picture it as being anywhere from season 9-14. and i think by the time he meets her he really is like basically celibate. like he hasn’t been with anyone by choice for a long while by the time he meets her. he is a retired slut if you will.

saliently i don’t think he ever does anything with jj. that is a purely imaginative thing for him and he lowkey has a madonna whore complex about her. i don’t think he was ever really in love with her he just loved the idea of the pretty blonde girl loving him back. but that is a whole other thing. and he’s way over it when he meets reader.

n e way those r just my silly thoughts. like i said i don’t think i’m ever gonna fit this into the actual narrative but yeah that’s what ive been imagining!!

#asks #ramblings

[o0o0thorn0o0o]

I be back.

Images by themselves below the cut because I spent way too much time on them + text because I’ve been gone for a while—‘course I got a lotta say.

It’s certainly been a while, eh? I did this last cour, too, and I swear to God if I do this for the next cour… Worst part is, I haven’t even watched it yet this time, rip :,) Will definitely do sometime later today, for sure, for sure.

So, I meant to get this done for IchiHime week (and look at how that turned out, haha), but not only was July a month full of pleasure, but it was also full of pain work. I was bordering a D for Orgo, so I spent a good portion prioritizing that—and it wasn’t for naught! Not only did I pass, but I went from a C- to a B! A freaking B, not even a B-!!! I’m still so shocked… I also ended up with over a 100 for lab, but I honestly kinda expected that. I’m just so glad I graduated without failing Orgo 2. Was infinitely better than Orgo 1, but goodbye, will never see you again. If I ever do, it’ll be too soon… Had hella good professors, though. That, I will say.

I go from ranting about Orgo to raving, even though it’s almost been a month… Oops ^^” The grade just still makes me so giddy, haha. Anyway, been mainly prioritizing drawing this (plus a part two to this, which I do have done as well, but I will be posting that sometime later today), though I did spend a good portion of the first half of this month rebooting my personal writing club. Enough about where I’ve been—let’s talk about the piece, shall we?

So, this was originally just an art idea I knew I wanted to do later, and when I saw what the first prompt was, it automatically came to the forefront of my mind. That, plus with the idea I eventually got for the second prompt, I really just had to. I actually probably could’ve gotten this done in a more reasonable time, but, see, when things are just an idea, I don’t put too, too much thought into them—only enough to consider them neat or substantial or something.

When it actually came to it, I found myself at a dilemma of just how faithful I wanted to stick with Orihime’s confession. Originally, I thought about incorporating the five specific things she mentioned into different past lives, but then I realized the timelines wouldn’t really make sense with what I was going for, especially considering Soul Society and stuff, which I had not thought about. So I kinda had to choose between previous lives or parallel lives. I initially went with the latter, but… idk, last minute, like the week of, I decided after checking the prompt list one more time that, nah, I definitely wanted previous lives. So, uh… yeah… I might still end up making a parallel lives version of this in the future, ‘cause I did like those ideas, too. We’ll see.

Anyway, I did try to make them at least somewhat reminiscent of the five things: Orihime and Hikoboshi are related to the astronaut thing ‘cause of space and stars and stuff. Heian Period IchiHime, well, it’s a bit of stretch, but I couldn’t really fit donuts in here since the timeline between them and the introduction of ice cream and the current timeline would’ve made one/two of these lives tragically short without even factoring in Soul Society—nothing wrong with tragedy, but not for this post, haha. So I went with small Chinese cakes ‘cause they’re a sweet? And they’d definitely be a very rare and special treat, so… idk.

Shinigami IchiHime’s also a bit of a stretch? You’d think I’d have the easiest time with being a teacher sometime in history, but I ended up sticking it here, and I was adamant I wanted to draw them in their academy days. So, you’ve got Orihime teaching Ichigo some kido techniques or something, idk. Maybe there’s also a kido equivalent to the dummy Hollow thing? And Orihime has a similar/equivalent position to Shuuhei for that? Idk, am just spitballing here to justify myself even though I know I don’t have to.

Then finally, we got Edo Period IchiHime, with Ichigo introducing ice cream to Orihime for the first time ever. And then of course, I shouldn’t have to explain the last one, haha.

Oh, God, I have so much to catch up on… which I will do later. And hey, since my scheduled posts are all up, I guess I’ll just use my queue to reblog posts I’ve missed since Ik I definitely will be reblogging a lot—don’t wanna bombard you with a ton of posts, aha. I will be making them daily instead of weekly, though, so that I’m not stashing them for too long. Starting tomorrow.

#bleach #inoue orihime #kurosaki ichigo #ichihime #fanart #digital art #I hate backgrounds sooo much #made my wrist fricking hurt #and what? to look subpar? bah humbug… #also ew what’s with that new dashboard setup???

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

The Batman (2022) isn't perfect by any means, but it is still a phenomenal film and one of the best pieces of Bat-media in recent memory.

Firstly, the aesthetic. Seemingly small but an incredibly important part. BTAS was broody, '89 was gothic, Forever was campy, TDK was... bad. And TB I think finds a real sweet spot in between vibes. It's dark, serious, it's got a technological noir, and yet still has vibrancy and color and (the key to my heart) neon.

One scene, you'll be sitting in an abandoned tunnel with shadows and muddy colors, the next you'll be surrounded by police under white lights, and the next you'll be in a night club with LEDs of every color you can think.

The fights. This film has some of the best Batman fights I've ever seen period. Really just action in general. The night club, the hallway, the finale. It's not like TDK where every fight is slow, precise, methodical, and honestly boring. Each fight or chase here is energetic and entertaining. The choreography is excellent, the stakes are legitimately high, and the settings are always unique.

The night club is crowded and overwhelming, with people swinging, shouting, and grabbing at Bats who aren't even apart of the fight. His skills and equipment save his life multiple times, whether it's block a bullet with a precise pipe throw or survive a shotgun blast with his armor. When he finally grabs Penguin you feel as overwhelmed and animalistic as he does.

The precinct escape is tight and tense. From the punch to the jump, every second makes you feel the absolute abominable stress of trying to escape a building like this. Officers pouring out of every room, bullets whizzing by and beaming off his suit. Merely seconds to get the flight suit on before they come pouring out to the roof. We experience the fall with him as his nerves spike, all culminating in a quick second decision that ends with him crashing into the side of the road.

Gotham. The beloved city feels full here. Subways are crowded, streets are packed. The crime feels real. Vandals, gang violence, thieves, assassins, crime families. It's not just militants and killers. We see the systemic issues in place that cause these. We see the feelings and social strains that make people do this. It's like you're taking a peak into another world with context and history you don't know but understand. It feels right.

The characterizations. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "Bruce Wayne is the mask, Batman is the real you" thing inflamed by TDK. And I really don't like "the Waynes were corrupt and did bad things, even for good reasons".

I think there's so much more to say about the two very different, very real sides to Bruce's personality. The one that comes out as billionaire playboy philanthropist, and the one that comes out as a violent and vengeful demon. Both who are willing to suffer for their causes. And I think there's so much more when the Waynes die from a mugging. That the crime is so bad it took the highest. That it could take anyone at any time, even the beloved elite.

However it does something right that most other Bat-media fails at. It makes Batman a symbol of hope. It demonstrates a growth in himself. That he can do more good to inspire the people than to instill fear in them.

Pandaredd made a good video on this, but in Crisis On Two Earths, Bats' opposite is represented as the ultimate nihilist. This means that at his core, Batman is really the ultimate optimist. And that makes sense. You don't put on a suit and fight crime, you don't try to create resources to help people, you don't befriend and reform your own Rogues gallery unless you believe you can change something. That all the work you do, all the suffering you experience will be worth it when you get to know the world healed.

And that's something The Batman understands. Batman started as a symbol of fear. So that every criminal hesitates at an alley. Panics at a shadow. But he became something else. A symbol of optimism. So that people can walk the streets at night. That they can get the help they need. That they can look into the sky with hope.

#i mean dude literally has a candy pouch on his tool belt. he's just the friendly neighborhood nightmare demon #amywho go watch The Long Halloween. it has good morally-iffy Waynes and a near perfect Two Face #batman #the batman #battinson #robert pattinson #gotham #gotham city #bruce wayne #the batman 2022 #i actually don't really like zodiac Riddler but i can excuse it for this film. i much prefer flamboyant twink Riddler #theres a cool animatic of “Good Songs Never Die” which has scary batman and a unique Riddler. highly recommend it #iceberg lounge #movies #films #i despise The Dark Knight in case it wasn't obvious #I'll probably make a video about the trilogy someday but nearly everything about those films are just WRONG #they are great movies ig but absolutely trash batman films that an entire generation of fans modeled their perception off of #batman fandom #now all I'm saying is maybe one day we'll get harlivy in something outside of the comics or HQ show #lord knows James gunn isn't gonna give it to us

[runningfrom2am]

to be honest, giving your favourite books for an undefined period of time is a huge thing when even lending them to your friends is hard enough.

“Him and Cole are practically the same person!” no, they just happen to be looking exactly the same. coryo is one of a kind and you can take this both as a compliment and an insult.

“Lennox you are such a.. boy!” me, any given moment.

almost nothing is as unsettling to me as relationships that don’t have a name. r can’t go and live in the capitol anytime soon and coryo would rather die than live in district 12. i understand why they haven’t discussed it, though i’m sure that coryo is more than willing to call her his “girlfriend”, yet it feels like personal attack.

THEY ARE COMMUNICATING!! FINALLY!! 🥹

cole, when i catch you cole WHEN I CATCH YOU- (he got what he deserved 😌)

standing in front of a gun held by the boy you love but also had nightmares about, for someone who was talking about getting you killed when you know it may cause too much trouble for you, takes a lot of will power. not everyone could and certainly not everyone would. this was what stopped coryo from shooting, what reminded him of all the other times.

coryo trying to save r from seeing yet another body-

WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH HER?

bestieee i was so nervous for you to read this part haha so i HOPE you liked it ahhh

1. omg literally like i couldn’t do it hahah she is stronger than i

2. men with blonde hair and blue eyes are a very valid weakness to have in my opinion. also i feel like lennox won’t really see past that surface level similarity, at least not until coryo proves to him that he is different

3. lol literally he is once again proving his little brother energy haha

4. SO REALLL situationships are an actual nightmare. me and my bf had to go from spending every day together for the first few months of our relationship to being long distance and it was SO hard and we couldn’t talk about it at ALL until literally the day we both had to leave. and even then we had a plan of when we would see each other again and we could call everyday and facetime everyday but for them they have none of those options like i wouldn’t talk about it either.

and yes like he’s dying to be like “yes this is my girlfriend” but i feel like he’s still a little bit scared of rejection after what happened after the games where she unintentionally ghosted him

5. WE LOVE THEM BEING ABLE TO COMMUNICATE OMG

6. HES SO FUCKED FOR THAT like i really need to know what their history is bc i feel like it’s some complicated tea. bottom line he did get what he deserved lol

7. it’s literally so intense and like clearly it was an impulsive decision on her part but she really committed. i think too that it was really good for her bc 1. obviously she knows now for sure that he wouldn’t hurt her (at least not on purpose) and 2. that maybe she hasn’t changed as much as she feared that she did. or maybe at the very least she’s starting to come back. it was a HUGE step for her and honestly i’m proud.

9. aww like yeah of course he would 🥺 he really tried his best and made her his priority like immediately and just AH

10. 🤭🤭🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

#i have the answers #cold nights <3 #that-veela-girl

[jackietaylorsversion]

Ok so…ima need you to explain jackieshauna to me. Because I’ve stanned so many f/f ships, but I just don’t….see it. I see people refer to them as homoerotic yet….they barely even show physical affection. Hell, they barely show affection towards the other. So what are y’all seeing that I’m not?

I mean yeah I can explain what I see for sure! But also; ships are just ships, and they’re just for fun. You can not see it if you don’t want to, and that’s totally your prerogative! Honestly, I’m cool with people seeing it or people not seeing it or whatever. It’s all pretty chill to me.

But, to me, there’s definitely something there. Gosh, it’s almost hard for me to put it into words. It helps that the showrunners have stated that they loved each other, with Bart explicitly saying in an interview that they were in love.

However, i guess I should get into why I like it. For one, they’re childhood best friends, but there’s also something so much history between the two that we don’t even get to see in the show. But what we do see in the show is two people who know each other so, so well but not at all, not really. They got used to the idea of knowing each other and appear to have forgotten taking the time to actually do that.

The way that Jackie and Shauna look at each other is another reason I like them. From the pilot episode, to me, it looks like there’s something in their eyes when they see each other. The way they look at each other in line at the pep rally, the way Shauna stares at Jackie and Jeff. Now, an argument can be made that Shauna’s jealous because of Jeff, but there’s not enough evidence to back that in the show. The main (and likely only) reason that Shauna sleeps with Jeff is because he’s Jackie’s. Because she wants what Jackie has, because she wants to be Jackie. In my opinion, she does it because she’s chasing the taste of something she thinks she can never have. Then, of course, you have Jackie looking back at Shauna, Shauna looking back at Jackie, the hug, the “love you,” the fact that it isn’t returned.

And all of that’s just the pilot.

There’s so much love and jealousy between these two characters. And there’s a lot of physical touch and intimacy if you know where to look for it. Sharing the necklace, the numerous times that they hug, the lingering shots of hands gripping shirts, arms squeezing tight. I love the jealousy aspects, how Jackie reacts to Shauna spending more time with Tai, the way Shauna looks at Jackie when she chooses to hang out with Mari at the lake. Jackie is trying to make Shauna jealous; it’s working.

Jackie never moves on from Shauna’s betrayal; it’s a contributing factor in her death. And, like. She would have forgiven Shauna if she’d just apologized; the dream in the season one finale kind of confirms that. She’s more upset about the way that Shauna thinks about her than the cheating. And it seems less upsetting to her that Jeff cheated on her with Shauna than the fact that Shauna cheated on her with Jeff. It’s the secrets. “You lost your virginity without me.”

Shauna never moved on from Jackie. Period. Full stop. The trajectory of her entire life changes. She fits herself uncomfortably into the life that she thinks Jackie would have occupied, despite the fact that Jackie never planned on being with Jeff full time, always planned to go to college, likely hoped to make something of herself. Shauna fits herself into the mold that she thinks Jackie would have settled for in her worst timeline because Shauna thinks she deserves it. She sees Jackie’s ghost, both in ‘96 and ‘21, though some of the hauntings are almost a perversion of who we actually see Jackie to be in the show. She talks to her corpse, keeps it for two entire months between season one and season two before the rest of the girls do something about it.

“I can’t tell where you end and I begin.” “She wants us to.” “It’s what she would have wanted, if not for us, then for you.” They cared about each other. They really did love each other. And they were kind of obsessed with each other, so much so that it sort of ruined both of their lives.

So I don’t know. I mean, it’s just the way I feel about them, what I see when I watch the show. I think there’s plenty of evidence that they’re affectionate towards each other. They do more than just revolve around each other; they’re like organs in the same organ system, connected and needing each other to survive. And they feed off of each other. Oh, teenage girls cannibalize each other metaphorically all the time, and Jackie and Shauna were doing it for years before they ever ate Jackie’s body. This is all just my own personal opinions and my own reading of the show. But I think there’s more than enough evidence there.

#answered #yellowjackets #jackie taylor #shauna shipman

[cookinguptales]

frank discussion of gynecological issues and frustrations with OBGYNs (especially re: chronic illness) under the cut, but I guess also potentially useful information for people who want to hear about it

so... some of you might remember when I was going to OGBYNs a little while ago. I have endometriosis and PMDD diagnoses, so going to OBGYNs isn't exactly unusual for me, but I ended up going to see more than I usually do.

this was largely because the hormonal therapy that I was taking for those disorders was starting to fail and I was bleeding a lot. like... for weeks at a time over a period of months. I had to deal with some... frustrating OBGYN advice in this time (such as the rage-inducing "well, women have to bleed") but I also discovered that like... I mean, I think I always knew that I had more vaginal pain than other people I know, but a lot of things hurt me so I just kind of... ignored it?

but they tried to put me on the nuva ring for a little while during this period and my body just... straight-up rejected it. it hurt like a bitch to put in, it kept coming out, I could feel it in there and it hurt, etc.

I ended up comparing notes with some other people I know and realized that my problems with insertion were probably more severe than I'd thought. like, it is not unusual for me to cry during pap smears and have cramping for days afterward. I cannot use tampons without massive pain. your body is not really supposed to physically expel something like a nuva ring several times a day. tmi I guess but I have not found penetration of any kind pleasant.

so I talked to... I want to say four or five different OBGYNs in this period, and none of them gave me a real reason for this. the prevailing attitude was mostly "oh yeah, that happens sometimes. lmao."

the best I could get was a diagnosis of "vaginismus" on my chart, and when I pressed for more information, they basically told me it was a psychological thing where your body is afraid of penetration so it clenches up and won't unclench. they literally grilled me on my history of sexual abuse to see if they could find the source of my dick phobia.

now... not to get too into it, but I do have a history of CSA -- but my pain problems predate it. I got my period relatively early and I've never been able to use tampons or anything like them. every time I've tried has ended in literal tears. again, cramping pain for days, even after the period itself has stopped.

so I get the dick phobia diagnosis from two different doctors, but one of them says she can do a transvaginal ultrasound if I'm really worried. we do this and it is uh. excruciating, honestly. thank god it was in California and they let me get high as a kite.

in the end, they can't find anything "physically" wrong with why I'm in pain and they send me on my way, dick phobia dx in hand.

today. today. YEARS later. I am googling tips on how to try a menstrual cup if you have vaginismus (prep for the trip abroad; I don't like Japanese pads) and I see someone saying "oh, I'm glad that treatment worked for you, my problems are because of ehlers-danlos syndrome."

you know, one of the chronic illnesses I have and one that I divulged to every OBGYN I saw.

what.

paging Dr. Google!!!

I come to find out that folks that have EDS, because of their connective tissue issues and extremely brittle skin, sometimes deal with extreme gynecological pain. it's partially pelvic floor issues, partially the fact that the skin in your vagina is breaking.

so all those times that I said "it feels like it's cutting me" or "it feels like knives" were probably because it was fucking cutting me. all those times I said I felt scraped raw for days was probably because abrasions take a long time to heal when you have EDS.

I cannot believe. I cannot believe. that I went into so many different OBGYNs who told me that my pain issues were because I had a psychological fear of dicks and when I told them I was a lesbian were like "oh well then problem solved" when actually my body was physically tearing. I had even seen blood sometimes and it had always been dismissed as spotting.

the anger I feel rn is indescribable, tbh. I never bought that my problems were all in my head (probably because doctors used that line on me so often when I was a kid and getting other chronic illnesses diagnosed) but the fact that gynecological health science is still so fucking awful that we shrug off pain that is the symptom of dangerous chronic illnesses as "well that happens sometimes" or "have you considered that maybe you're afraid of sex?"

I JUST

this reminds me of when I had to find out from a fucking tumblr post that vaginal secretions are made from blood rather than glands, so if you have bad blood pressure/flow it'll often cause itchiness/dryness/pain. bad blood flow like... idk... maybe POTS.

so again, it was actually one of my known chronic illnesses causing gynecological issues, not any of the other bullshit reasons doctors were giving me, like age or stress.

I hate that I'm fucking 33 years old and I still have to learn stuff like this from google searches. I still don't know how my shitty body works, and it's largely because of stuff like this. what the fuck. I'm so mad. why do doctors still treat vaginas like a fucking scary mystery?

I'm well aware that Dr. Google doesn't always know what the fuck it's talking about, but apparently neither do my doctors! which is why, yet again, I'm up all night reading medical journals in the vain attempt to figure out how to actually live my life!

ugh!!!

#also the idea that vaginal pain only matters bc of sex and potentially deadly gynecological issues only matter bc of fertility #like your organs are only useful for sex or babies #and just not wanting to fucking hurt in daily life doesn't actually matter #makes me feel like my body is only useful when it can be used by others #hate that! #cw: #gynecology #ehlers danlos syndrome #postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome #ask to tag ig

[qqueenofhades]

Hi! Just wanted to say I found my way to your blog after a mutual recced one of your Old Guard fics and mentioned you were a medievalist (I LOVE medieval history, though I am simply an amateur nerd) and was extremely pleasantly surprised to see so many level-headed political takes on this blue hellsite. I'm sure some of your posts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular have attracted more than a few mouth breather asks, so I just wanted to say I really appreciate your thorough and nuanced breakdowns of not only the conflict, but American politics in general. I know it's not your academic area of expertise, but your perspective as a historian is incredibly insightful and has honestly even brought some comfort in These Trying Times. I like to go through your posts whenever I feel the 2024 election anxiety seizing hold.

Aha, thank you. I do my best. And while yes, I do periodically get deeply stupid asks/notes on some of my more controversial posts, I will say that I am at least old enough to not give a shit about what idiots on social media say, and I am nothing if not stubborn. So yes, I persist, and I am glad that plenty of people also seem to appreciate what I do and like to listen and/or be comforted by what I have to say. Win some lose some, etc.

As I have said, I am a historian, and while that doesn't mean I have the Greatest Takes Ever of All Time and nobody can question me, it does mean that I view things in a particular long, careful, and systematic way, taking into account multiple perspectives and facts and points of view, because that is what I have been trained to do. As far as the election goes: trust me, I am as terrified about it as everyone else, and I'm already having to carefully manage, restrict, and otherwise be mindful about how much content I am taking in and from what sources. It is only February and November is probably going to kill me. But we have to do our best to be both realistic and hopeful, so I do.

Once again, I am just a person on the Internet and I do not have some magical guarantee of being right. But I will say that my predictions and views do quite often correspond closely with actual reality, and that makes me decently confident that I do in fact understand the situation and am able to analyze/discuss it accurately. Which is certainly something that anyone can do, if they're patient; you don't need to be a historian for that. As I have said before, I am doomed on social media because I don't go in for short soundbites or pithy black and white statements. But it does show that I am able to think and speak in a hopefully more useful way than the usual garbage noise, I'm honored that people are often eager to come to me when they want some basic reassurance, and I do my best. So yes. Thanks. (And glad you enjoyed the fic!)

#cbk1000 #ask