1975: There is mass panic in Adelaide after a house painter / part time psychic claimed God was about to send a tsunami to wipe out the city, should a plan to legalise homosexuality become law, with news reports reaching as far as London.

In response to the media frenzy, and to reassure the public, Premier Don Dunstan announced that he will be travelling to the beach to fight the sea, where he was met by hundreds of locals who had used the apocalypse as an excuse to take the day off work.

Follow for more Batshit Moments in Australian Politics

The Golden Hour (Prelude)

The Golden Hour is an ambitious Elden Ring graphic novel about King Morgott's life. It is a purely fan-made project, by two women: Writing & art editing: EldenBiscuit/ Lin Art & Illustration: Maledicta Art/ Sofia

We hope you like it!! <3 If you did, please consider sharing it with others, so that more people can enjoy it!

stop calling me "my fragile little flower" or "my beautiful delicate pet" im literally going for a glass cannon build. i can one shot most adults

no . wait . come back im sorry. im your fragile little flower and there is a scary man charging up a beam to turn my beautiful fragile petals into ash

In fond allusion to this post:

All my female ancestors watching over me like "Look at her... she has time to study art and politics and history... she spends her time writing stories that mean something to her..."

"She can take a pill for pain whenever she wants! A mysterious thing called Advil that eases the Curse of Eve!"

"Forget Eve, our great-great granddaughter doesn't have to go to Mass three times a week! She can say what she thinks!"

"She only sews and bakes when she wants to, when she wants to make beautiful things!"

"Thirty-three and she's young and strong, not saddled with babies and family members to take care of... she's taking care of herself and helping out her parents too--- that's our girl! That's OUR GIRL!"

in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.

The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it’s not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can’t hunt, but instead, making a point about war.

Artemis was, among other things–patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood–the protector of young girls. That’s a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.

There’s no contradiction, though, when it’s framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.

Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.

And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.

Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.

It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.

@crwatters

men dont seem to understand how damaging rape actually is. it is your undoing- it destroys you in every way imaginable. you dont feel like yourself anymore- meaning you dont actually know who you are. you dont feel safe anymore- meaning every interaction is overanalysed to understand if he will be your future rapist. you dont know how to exist anymore- knowing hes gotten away with it, that he exists and you are stuck with unwanted emotions and a big wall in the way of your life continuing. it is torture, from the actual event to the end of your life, to know this happened and that happened and that justice will never be served and that he'll probably go do it again to some other girl and you cannot save her. you cannot save yourself. he is the oppressor and you are oppressed and you felt that so explicitly.

Source

A thing I wish DAO went into more: the way Alistair is in some ways incredibly selfish. Like, the way he refuses to take charge of the group is treated as kind of endearing in the text, but the game doesn't really get into what a massive burden he just... drops on the junior Warden present with no warning or discussion. Think about it: the Warden is heavily implied to be very young (possibly younger than Alistair, definitely around the same age), most of them have no real experience in leadership, several of them have no experience in the world outside their small corner, all of them have only been Wardens for a few days. And Alistair dumps leadership of the group on them and refuses to take any of that weight. Does your Warden like leadership? Are they any good at it? Is it exhausting and difficult for them? Alistair doesn't care! He doesn't want to lead, and that means you have to lead, and whether or not you want to lead has no bearing on that. It's not a discussion, there's no suggestion of sharing the responsibility of leadership as the Wardens of the group; Alistair metaphorically throws the responsibility at you and runs.

But if you go for low approval with Alistair it's basically all about calling him childish and immature, even though I think a much more compelling low approval dynamic is the Warden despising Alistair for putting so much on them with no hesitation, but being stuck with him (because they know as well as he does that they need all hands on deck Warden-wise) and stuck with that burden of leadership (because a Warden kind of has to be in charge of the group and even if one didn't no one else in the group would be very good as a leader in this situation, and Alistair has made it very clear that he won't take it). Even at high approval it would be very compelling to have this sense of resentment at how Alistair just assumed they'd take on the burden of leadership and refuses to take any of it for himself. But that aspect gets completely ignored in the story, you don't really get the chance to raise the matter aside from asking why you're in charge despite him being the senior Warden present a couple of times.

It also adds something really spicy to the fallout of sparing Loghain, though, because... Alistair forced the Warden to take on leadership. He made them be the one to make these hard choices. It's never been a discussion, it's never been the Warden's choice whether or not they take on responsibility for these tough decisions, Alistair always just expects them to do it. And now they've made a call he doesn't like, and he abandons the group on the eve of battle because of his wounded feelings? I'd argue that's as much a betrayal as sparing Loghain if not more so, and certainly more of a betrayal of Duncan's memory; Duncan understood that a good Warden must be driven by necessity, not emotion or even morality, and I feel like in the Warden's place he likely would've made the same call. They need Wardens around to kill the Archdemon, as many as they can get, and even one more could make the difference between victory and defeat. The Warden and Alistair may not know the details, but with the most senior Warden present saying they should make Loghain a Warden instead of killing him a logical assumption would be he has a very good reason for saying so and maybe they should listen to him! I would've loved it if during the argument with Alistair after sparing Loghain you could really get into that "You forced the responsibility of making these decisions on me when I never wanted or asked for it, you don't get to throw a tantrum now that I've made one you don't like" aspect of it, but you... don't. And that's a shame, because it takes a lot of depth away from his dynamic with the Warden.

You raise a fantastic point re Riordan that I didn't entirely think through when I mentioned him, which is that arguably as the most senior Warden present by decades both Alistair and the Warden are bound to follow his orders. He is the senior Warden present, and unlike Alistair he isn't dumping authority on his juniors, which means that he should be the one in charge. Alistair isn't just freaking out and abandoning his duty as a Warden because the person he forced to take charge made a choice he disliked for personal reasons, he's accusing them of betraying the Wardens because... they followed the proper chain of command instead of doing what Alistair wanted. The most senior Warden present said "Hey, we should do this" and the Warden said "Yes sir" because that's what they should be doing in this situation, and Alistair blames them.

Which kind of gives me the impression that Alistair has by this time forgotten that he's the one who forced the Warden to take charge of the group? A Warden who never wanted that burden, or even a Warden who's fine with leadership but would have preferred to follow the proper chain of command, would logically jump at the chance to put the decisions in a senior Warden's hands! Finally, someone who actually knows what they're doing is taking charge and taking that burden from the Warden! But if Alistair is thinking that they want to lead and have chosen to do so and didn't just do it because no one else would and someone had to, him blaming them for doing what Riordan said even though Riordan had more authority to make that call than they did makes a lot more sense. Alistair's like "But you're in charge, why are you listening to him", forgetting that they're only in charge because he forced them to be in charge. And again, that total failure to even consider that maybe the Warden never wanted to be in charge and it's a relief to have the chance to give that role up to a more experienced Warden (even though throwing leadership of the group on the first even vaguely qualified person to come along is literally exactly what Alistair did and at least Riordan has the experience to justify it) is a fascinating part of his character and it's a real shame that the game doesn't really let the player get into that with him.

...And it's also really interesting to me that there's no acknowledgement that if Alistair had taken command of the group as the senior Warden present this would not be happening, especially if you're playing a Warden who is sparing Loghain because the senior Warden present told them to. If Alistair had done arguably his duty as the senior Warden and taken charge right at the start, he wouldn't be bound by the Warden's decisions (they would in fact be bound by his, so even if they're partially sparing Loghain because they personally want to they wouldn't be able to). Instead he dropped that authority on the junior Warden, so now Loghain gets to live because he can't take it back at this juncture, and I really wish that sparked any sort of realization in him about what it actually means to give power to someone else whether they want it or not.

I think Alistair's complete abdication of responsibility is even more wild(and terrifying) if you're playing as Amell or Surana.

Like, a mage Warden could feasibly have been in the Circle from age 7, possibly younger. I know a lot of people who only have one or two memories from that age! It is completely possible for Amell or Surana to just not remember life outside the Circle, especially since it seems likely a lot of them have trauma around being taken away by Templars(or sent away by their family).

They've never cooked. They've never hunted or foraged. They've never camped. They have no memories of snow or rain. They don't remember touching a tree or grass or a flower that isn't dried and used for herbalism or alchemy.

And then Duncan comes and saves them, and imagine that walk or ride to Ostagar. They're so excited but they've never walked all day or ridden a horse, so they're probably miserable in like an hour. Duncan has to teach them everything during that trip. They have no survival skills because the Circle doesn't want them to have any.

And then they get to Ostagar, and Duncan dies. And the only other Warden, who is definitely a more Warden-y Warden than they are because he's been a Warden for more than two days, refuses to make any choices, and this old lady in a swamp says "I guess you're in charge" and then you have to save the world! A world you know nothing about.

Like, canonically, a mage Warden probably doesn't know anything about money. You join a Fraternity after your Harrowing, and they've only been Harrowed a short time when Duncan conscripts them. Maybe they talked to Lucrisians before, maybe they were apprenticed under one, but maybe they weren't!

Until going into the Korcari Wilds with Alistair and the other recruits, they've probably never been in battle. They have all these spells, but they've never been seriously attacked(maybe they pulled an Anders, but maybe not!). They have maybe a little training in strategy from Duncan, maybe some theoretical knowledge from books.

I just... imagine being that isolated, and then being put in charge of saving the world. And finally, finally, there's someone willing to step up and take responsibility, someone who knows what you're up against (and isn't politically motivated like Eamon), and he's willing to take the burden you've spent a year carrying off your shoulders so you can go back to learning how to be a person.

And the moment you do what a good Warden should do, and listen to your leader, Alistair hates you. This person you've spent a year with, who abdicated all choices onto your lap. Your friend, maybe even your lover.

Imagine the sense of betrayal.

I love how tumblr as a whole has done a 180 on the not like other girls phenomenon and somehow created an entirely new and completely antiquated form of misogyny that states that women who don’t enjoy conforming to gender roles are the real sexists because women who don’t naturally enjoy the roles placed upon them and refuse to submit it’s because of internalized misogyny and not because gender roles are restrictive bullshit

Republican politics, writ large.

Paraglider and black vulture chilling

(via)

I NEVER get tired of this video. It would be fantastic if the bird was just flying near him, but the fact it feels safe and comfortable enough to land ON his paraglider, isn't startled when he pets it, and is NIBBLING HIS SHOES... blessed moment, absolutely fabulous, 10/10 gold stars.