#who we once were

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

#idk what to tag this #worldbuilding #writing fiction #historical fiction #fantasy #a real-life example: my dad (a pediatrician) was once entrusted with the care of a baby who was born with a rare condition #this was in a place without great hospital/medical access and anyway they were going to fly the baby over #and he specifically asked them to bring the mother and baby #they show up with baby and...the baby's uncle #and he was like. y'all. do you think I asked for the mom to come just for fun??? We don't have formula here. what is the baby going to eat?

[heph]

A Moment in Time - Dearly Missed

#love them so much #a moment in time is the title because seeing the sunlight once more is gonna only be for a short period of time... #because karlach [spoilers] non blue ended #and astarion spawn ending #the two people who havent seen the sun in decades #enjoying the sunshine that was robbed from them when they were forced into servitude #i only wish we could have extended this time for them... i wish nothing but happiness for them #baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #astarion #astarion bg3 #karlach #karlach bg3 #bg3 karlach #astarion ancunin

[peakvincent]

new game is to type one through ten in your tags and see what comes up. i think my favorite of mine is ‘my uncle told us he spent seven and a half hours in a sensory deprivation tank once’ but ‘gideon the ninth motherfucker’ is a close second

#one is that bad laptops can still handle custom content #two stupid old men who i lovehate :( #goddamn it i wish the three funniest women alive would tell me what i just saw #the f in rpf stands for fourth wall #ten pounds of trauma in a five pound bag #me and alice will both read it and i think that brings you up to like six!!! #my uncle told us he spent seven and a half hours in a sensory deprivation tank once #goal was one book per store and we ended up with six stores and eight books which actually i think is fine #gideon the ninth motherfucker #thinking about the ten inexplicable minutes where jay and i were very in on brandon saad/roberto luongo #*

[yrsonpurpose]

“C’mere,” he says, surging up to kiss Alex, and he’s putting his whole body into it now, sliding his hands down to palm at Alex’s ass as he kisses him. Alex feels a sound tear itself from his throat, and he’s following Henry’s lead blindly now, kissing him deep into the mattress, riding a continuous wave of Henry’s body.

#rwrb #rwrbedit #red white and royal blue #firstprince #alex x henry #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #userninz #userveronika #usersteen #usernuria #chrissiewatts #usermaloune #mine* #have we done this angle/rotation yet? probably by this point #but what is one more among friends #anyway i was in the middle of another set & got *waves hands* distracted #i sometimes wonder if the teeth were intentional but bc its literally canon i think who even cares #its henry chasing alex in the last gif for me #once matthew said this was henrys first time with someone he had real feelings for... i was Changed #like you could probably work that out by yourself but KNOWING it for sure hm. makes the campfire and lake sequence a lot heavier #'casual' okay. you're a lying liar who lies.

[bluechanas]

YEEHAW BABY

#one piece #nami #monkey d. luffy #roronoa zoro #my art #i can’t believe the only one piece cowboy-themed content we have are three outfits from a GACHA GAME #homophobia strikes once again #(also ace and miss allsunday who were cowboy-coded but. u know. were

[the-nothing-maker]

When will gods let you rest

#the legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #totk #ganondorf #my art #i said i'd draw ganon with his hair down and i am not the kind of guy who backs away from a promise #ANYWAY i am begging BEGGING begging totk to FINALLY let us be allies with ganon #PLEASE please please #own up to your entire 'what if we were more than our destinies' themes in botw !! #reunite the triforce ! destroy demise once and for all ! i am crying shaking i am BEGGING #this would be so good......

[captnbas]

bbc / rtd you cowards

#14th doctor #14th doctor fanart #regeneration #sketch for the people :^) #cos goddammit we were once again robbed #and I don’t wanna hear the excuses #dr who is queer af we can handle a bit o cross dressing #artists on tumblr #dr who fanart #basil draws

[rosepompadour]

NATALIE WOOD & PAUL NEWMAN with their Golden Globes for World's Favorite Actress and Actor, 1966

#not pictured: their awards for best eyes in the business #i was at a west side story screening at film forum once and the complete stranger sitting next to me leans over and says: #'who gives a shit if she was dubbed it's all in her EYES!' #we were great friends by the end of the movie #natalie wood #paul newman #*

[ohwhatagloomyshow]

I know & remember very little about RTD as a person but I do remember he left DW to care for his dying partner and that his partner has since died. And the way that this is so evident in his approach to 14 and 15, it’s phenomenal.

2005 Davies was interested in high drama, big stakes, the roughest heartbreak that could exist. And now he’s lived it, and it feels like his approach to the show has shifted as he has shifted!

14 getting to rest, Wilf alive off-screen, Donna’s memories returned - 15 leaving his trauma and his heartbreak and his pain with 14 in order to begin again fresh and new and ALIVE…it is all so meaningful to me!!!

#doctor who #15th doctor #I’m just THINKING about how the meaning of death and grief and mourning is LOVE #and once you really learn that deep in your bones you are a fundamentally changed person #and while I personally wanted 14 to be fully gone & fully regenerate #(I thought we were gonna see a shot of him like properly healing and then fade away in regeneration light) #the idea of him having a happy ending…. #just this once rose everyone lives! #it is so precious and tender to me #spoilers #doctor who spoilers

[genderqueerpond]

We don't talk enough about the fact that Amelia Pond, s5 Amelia Pond, before the timeline is reset, isn't just a normal orphan. Her parents didn't die, didn't abandon her, and didn't send her away. They never existed in the first place.

And if her parents never existed, then Amelia cannot exist. She is a causal impossibility.

"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces." A photograph. A face carved into an apple. Yes. Sure.

A child.

Now that's too big, surely.

But that's what she is. She is exactly the same as these things. A trace. An echo of something that could never be, never was, never could have been.

And the universe should never allow it. A whole person, that's just too much. She could not have continued to exist indefinitely, in normal circumstances, after her parents never existed.

In normal circumstances.

Because the Doctor didn't just save her from things coming out of the crack in her wall. He saved her from going into it. And he didn't just save her from the threat of going into it simply because of its vicinity.

No, by arriving when he did, he interrupted a process that was probably already in motion. And then by arriving again only moments later on a cosmic relative timestream (too quickly for the process to complete) and yet in the local relative timestream, years later --- years of a potential future caught midway through the process of rewriting -- he solidified that existence. Amy is a creature from another timeline, caught in amber. The Doctor prevented her from never existing, but only after she could already never exist.

And so, no one around Amelia thinks about it. Neither does she. There's some kind of consciousness block, because if you thought about it, really thought about it, for two seconds you'd realize she cannot exist. And the human mind can't deal with that. So, to protect itself, everyone's brain simply slides off it before ever noticing. They just assume that her existence makes sense, and don't question it, and don't notice what they don't question, that is staring them in the face.

But of course, to some extent they do notice. They can't think it, but they notice subconsciously that there's something they can't think. They notice there's something wrong with her, something uncanny. And they don't like it, and they alienate her even more because of it.

"Does it ever bother you Pond that your life existence doesn't make any sense?"

#like!!!!!! why arent we talking about this!!!!!!! #amelia pond #amy pond #the ultimate autism metaphor on top of being autistic anyway #doctor who #dw #ndw #dw theory #lavender thoughts #SHE CAN'T EXIST SHE IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE #you called clara the impossible girl but that's amy #and THEN the fact that even after it's all set right #she remains shaped by -- remains deeply traumatized by -- a timeline that never happened; a reality that never was #AUGH !!!!! #some wounds just can't heal even if the thing that caused them never existed in the first place #some wounds remain as a TRACE of the other time just as you yourself were once #THE mental illness rep of all time #and in the big bang of course the doctor had to take the shortcut because if they'd all gone the long way round #she'd have been gone before he got there #as starless universe's little amelia disappeared.... it could be millienia but from another perspective it HAD to be moments #they made it only in the nick of time #and the doctor knew that #pond #the life and times of amy pond

[dollopheadsandclotpoles]

The fact that in ep 1x09 they went with the choice to dress Uther and Gaius up like Merlin and Arthur is making my brain draw comparisons I really don't want it to draw

#bbc merlin #Gaius's loyalty to Uther despite his treachery against his own kind??? #Uther still trusting Gaius despite knowing he practiced sorcery once #a thing that Uther canonically despised even BEFORE it “”“killed”“” his wife??? #Gaius being the only one who knows about Nimueh!?!?!? AND MORGANA!??! #HELLO /hello!!!!!!!! #they were the original failed merthur the gods were like we gotta do this again but we gotta do it right this time #LITERALLY IN THIS SCENE UTHER IS LIKE YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN A GOOD FRIEND DESPITE MY TEMPER #I hate this so much #this is the ep where uther is even like you and Arthur have a bond huh #like he’s thinking back to his own fractured relationship with Gaius #am I reading too much into this? you decide

[luminarai]

Attempting to get the beast used to a dental hygiene routine is… well, it’s going.

(She stayed that way for a solid 8 seconds despite hating being held belly up so I think it’s safe to say that Mim is not beating the ‘tiny speaker playing elevator music instead of a brain’ allegations any time soon.)

#cecil blogs her life #my art #digital art #artists on tumblr #Mim the cat #cats on tumblr #cat art #comics #black cats #she’s actually pretty good about it normally - like she doesn’t enjoy it but she lets me do it without too many complaints #ofc I make sure to do it as quickly as possible and give her lots of dental friendly rewards lmao #she’s currently sleeping on top of me so I think I’m forgiven #I don’t believe she has any current dental issues so it’s mostly preventative #esp bc we don’t know exactly how old she is or what her life was like before I adopted her #this is probably seven different kinds of heretical but anyway #shout out to Tom my childhood priest who once told me not to take the bible literally after I asked him where the dinos were supposed to #fit into genesis. incredible. anyway I’m a non believing heathen now so meh #who cares #these tags are a RIDE wtf cecil

[lycorim]

Iron Islands naming conventions are soooo funny because on one hand you have the most viking-ass names that ever did exist you've got Stygg you've got Gelmarr you've got Harl Jorl Qarl you've got Ragnor. A good number of them overlap with Freefolk names (idk what to do with that information either). But then a small handful would better fit in a Jane Austen novel with how fucking posh they sound in isolation. This is a post about Tristifer Botley.

#asoiaf #iron islands #valyrianscrolls #tristifer botley #and i don't know what the fuck balon was doing naming his son after a Stark king who fought AND WON!!! a war against the Ironborn #bc that's the only other Theon we ever hear about in the books so like. what else am I supposed to assume GRRM. what #EDIT: there were ironborn Theons too actually I'm just dumb!! balon gets a pass this once!

[saturnsconstellation]

Charlie Oldman as Sirius Black every other face claim can go home guys.

#WE WERE LOOKING IN THE WRING PLACES #HE WAS LITERALLY ALWAYS THERE AND WE NEVER ONCE PAID HIM ANY MIND #who would’ve guessed it would be Gary’s son LMFAOO #the marauders #dead gay wizards #sirius black #take a good look at him and tell me that’s not Sirius #like u are completely bat shit insane #harry potter #wolfstar

[inkskinned]

im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:

videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.

and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.

this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.

there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.

there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.

for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.

i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.

here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."

eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.

we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.

"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"

thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.

it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.

an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.

and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."

#and there's something else in there about like .... #tbh once i got over something like 1k followers #i stopped being specific about my ED for a REASON. #yes on ur personal locked blog that u use like a diary go ahead etc #but we are OBVIOUSLY not talking about that. we're talking about the sheer NUMBER of people i could be talking about #in that one paragraph. that you and i probably were thinking about 2 different influencers #bc they get to say that they're just posting FITNESS and if it's FITNESS it's OKAY and im like #jesus christ lord almighty #every person in recovery from an ED: this is incredibly dangerous holy shit do you know how much this would have triggered me #each of these ppl: how dare you!!!!!!!!! i am only harming those who WANT to engage with my content!!!!! #their followers: leave them alone !!! they can't help that they make an hours-long choice to frame their disorder as if it was #fucking cottagecore !!!! #like girlie this person needs THERAPY #again! i didn't even have that large of a following before i IMMEDIATELY deleted any specific mention of calories food etc #bc i recognize responsibility and i didnt EVER want to even ACCIDENTALLY encourage this #and im not even GETTING PAID FOR THIS!!! #aND THEY ARE!!! #something something something they know this content makes them money #they don't give a SHIT about u babe

[tubbytarchia]

Just saw this Jimmy skin for the first time from back when he could still experience joy and whimsy and uh yeah I can't blame anyone for having any parental instincts towards him (looks at myself and my moots and Doc)

#could not help myself. Bee onesie Jimmy.... He's so cute #my friend liveblogged their watch of this series and apparently even then people were making fun of him pretty relentlessly lol #smajor and others were so meaannn guh. Calling him the worst and killing him and talking about killing him. it stretches back far huh #but it was different at least... He was still a bit joyful... but in retrospect it hurts a lot lol. My poor son!!! #jimmy solidarity #tubby art #Being Jimmy is suffering... #one of these days he will pop off though. I trust him #also Martyn was there at least. Sigh Martyn and Jimmy... The joy and whimsy of the old days... #And some other guy we didnt know who very kindly got Jimmy's items back to him after he died once #this is what the Jimmy pipeline does. Him getting shown the slightest kindness is unfortunately noteworthy #Sorry from the LEGACY SMP! idk why I neglected to mention it for those who are wondering whoops