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Yeah, I'm actually far less likely to reblog anything if I get a guilt trip about it in the post regardless of context.

this is assuming its on art you normally wouldn't jump to reblog. i myself only rb stuff i really really like so .

The 'rude/demanding' tone would be stuff along the lines of "if you like but don't reblog I'll [threat]" which i see surprisingly often, both serious and more silly

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The BS-Free Witchcraft Podcast: 70. It’s Not About Us

Sometimes in this community folks have a habit of making things about them that… aren’t. So that’s what we’re addressing this time around. Because there are times where we need to step back and get some perspective.

Links:

Bennett Braun, Psychiatrist Who Fueled ‘Satanic Panic,’ Dies at 83 (NYT)

Pastor Greg Locke Threatens to Dox ‘Witches’ (Independent.co.uk)

Purchase ‘The Witch and the Rose’ in eBook or Paperback (Amazon)

Pre-Order ‘Bloody Damn Rite’ in eBook (Amazon)

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “So I Said It,” “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

Listen to the Episode | Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

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So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

[traegorn]

The BS-Free Witchcraft Podcast: 70. It's Not About Us

Sometimes in this community folks have a habit of making things about them that… aren’t. So that’s what we’re addressing this time around. Because there are times where we need to step back and get some perspective.

Links:

Bennett Braun, Psychiatrist Who Fueled ‘Satanic Panic,’ Dies at 83 (NYT)

Pastor Greg Locke Threatens to Dox ‘Witches’ (Independent.co.uk)

Purchase ‘The Witch and the Rose’ in eBook or Paperback (Amazon)

Pre-Order ‘Bloody Damn Rite’ in eBook (Amazon)

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “So I Said It,” “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

Listen to the Episode | Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

#Bennett Braun #Satanic Panic #The BS-Free Witchcraft Podcast

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Liechtenstein, regardless of size, is not a city under any definition. Liechtenstein has cities within it. The capital is Vaduz, though Schaan to the north has a larger population.

And no, Asia wouldn't be "close enough." It would be like saying "Chicago is in Wisconsin" is "close enough." No one is taught to refer to all of Eurasia as "Asia," and you are doing some really weird mental gymnastics to justify it.

The poll maker was wrong, and you're being weird about it.

#The part of me that went to school for Political Science is fucking screaming in frustration right now

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Then you would say Eurasia, not Asia as that would refer to the Asian portion of the Eurasian continent and Liechtenstein is next to fucking Switzerland in the Europe part.

And it's still not a city.

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Just to pair with your tagging me on the Liechtenstein poll @chthonicathenean 😆

It helped me to realize this.

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This poll hurts me. I have to believe the OP is trolling us.

Like even if you don't know it's a tiny country in Europe, who reads "Liechtenstein" and doesn't realize the name of the place is in German.

How the hell did "Asia" get in this.

#It literally means 'bright stone' #IT'S NEITHER IN ASIA NOR IS IT A CITY #THE CAPITAL OF LIECHTENSTEIN IS VADUZ!

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Tonight's TV involved watching an episode of that show where there's a woman who talks to dead people only she can see.

Then we watched an episode of a different show where there's a woman who talks to dead people only she can see.

Then, after that, we watched an episode of a third, different show where there's a woman who talks to dead people only she can see.

What a time to be alive.

#Dead Boy Detectives #Ghosts US #Not Dead Yet #Two of these shows star women who led CW shows before this

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What makes things a potion? Like is chamomile milk tea a potion or just tea? What makes an elixir different to a potion? Or any other liquid based magic item word? Or are we going with these are just made up do whatever? Would love it if there's an actual answer, it's way more interesting that way

Trae's super simple definition of a "potion": Any mixture of at least two ingredients which results in a liquid used for a magical purpose.

That's... that's it. Elixir is mostly just a synonym.

Sometimes this stuff's just not that complicated.

If it's alcoholic, then it's also a cocktail.

#witch #witchcraft #witchblr #potions

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Y'know, I don't know about other schools (and this was like twenty years ago) -- but at the university I went to, Business majors were almost universally despised across the rest of the school.

And almost all of them were completely unaware of this.

the universal college experience, no matter your major, is learning how remarkably fucked everything is. except business majors theyre having a great time learning to do basic arithmetic and and staring at that one supply and demand graph where the line goes up

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Not to mention, it takes skill to be ready enough to get lucky.

Your skill gives you the chance to have that luck to begin with.

Ugh... that fine line between art and service that I walk as a photographer certainly is making the impostor syndrome go haywire.

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You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

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Book update time! Back in January I published my first (non-graphic) novel, The Witch and the Rose (which you can buy here). I made it pretty clear that it was the first book in a series, and that more books would be coming.

And yeah, it's time to reveal that next book.

I'm excited to announce Bloody Damn Rite, the sequel to The Witch and the Rose and second book in the Mia Graves series, will come out June 11th on Kindle and paperback. Additionally, you can pre-order the Kindle eBook version of the book right now and it will be available on your devices immediately on June 11th.

So yeah! If you want some queer contemporary fantasy set in, of all places, an Indiana college town... I got two books for you.

There will be more.

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Easy Everyday Witch Tips!

Hey y'all, I know that it’s sometimes hard to keep witchcraft in your daily life, so I thought I’d put together a helpful list of tips which can help you connect with your craft every day.

Infuse your tea with herbs with magic(k)al properties. It’s a simple way to add magic(k) to your day.

Journal about your experiences. As you reflect you may find ways you connected with your magic(k) you didn’t initially notice until you write it down it later.

Take a moment to look at the stars at night. Stargazing can help connect you to the universe.

Engage with your cat and/or dog if you have one. Animals have a natural connection to the spirit world, and engaging with your pets can improve your own connection.

Go back outside and look at those stars again. Don’t you see, they’re calling to you.

Try to make meditation part of your regular routine if you can. While it doesn’t work for everyone, it can help you feel more connected and grounded. It can also help silence the ache that has clawed at you from before the dawn of time.

Add some herbs to your food! Herbal magic(k) is not only powerful but tasty too!

Go back outside again, and focus on the inky blackness of space. Climb up to the nearest roof, open your mouth, and let loose a primal scream in a voice that you don’t recognize… that echoes deep in the parts of your soul you had long forgotten in a different life. A life that existed before the universe was born.

If you use tarot cards, bring them out! Practice makes perfect, and it can improve your connection with your cards.

Unfurl your blackened wings. Take flight and begin the dance that harkens the coming of the death bringer, Xi'HWYTH'iL. Open one of your many mouths and let the call that beckons the great beast escape your lips.

Maybe take up yoga? I heard it can be fun!

#Just thought I'd bring this one back #This one sneaks past people's radars more than the other

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It is in fact very funny that a couple of dudes got so sick of waiting for Animusic 3 that they figured out how Animusic's technique of procedurally animating rigged instrument models based on MIDI input worked, wrote their own software, and started making their own original Animusic-style videos.

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Height

#my dumb face #nonbinary #genderqueer