theme? what theme?

Today I worked on some hand sewn buttonholes. Here is an image of not that at all.

challenge accepted.

"this work is problematic because of how it handles [subject]": reasonable premise for media criticism

"this work is problematic because it depicts [subject]": do not pass go do not collect $200 this is, as a general rule, a functionally reactionary and conservative argument

I think even more importantly:

"this work is problematic and you should be critical of the viewpoints it presents while engaging with it": reasonable premise for media criticism

"this work is problematic therefore everyone who engages with it is evil": do not pass go do not collect $200 this is, as a general rule, a functionally reactionary and conservative argument

A light in my house suddenly turned on- AND WHO DO I SEE?!?!

Shout out to the truck I passed with license plate

LCNPL8T

Fuck, dude, it sure is

Finally, an adolescent that looks like how adolescence feels.

now, guys, i like daenerys and all … i’m just saying that Lady Sybil Vimes is my real queen and mother of dragons.

like if she were in danny’s place, she’d not only abolish slavery for real, but the former slavemasters would definitely be more polite, they’d sit up straighter and they’d eat all their vegetables. and her dragons would be much tamer.

she’d do it in record time too

lady sybil vimes sitting on the iron throne. someone write this!!

“It’s a little…sharp, don’t you think, dear?” Vimes tried, voice echoing around the deserted throne room.

He disliked King’s Landing out of principle, it was all right there in the very name. Sybil was in her element however, although it was hard to think of a time when Lady Sybil wasn’t in her element. The world morphed to her, fitting snugly around her form until it settled around her as though she’d always belonged. He’d watched many a time as she’d made rich lords and ladies feel like strangers in their own grand homes and now—

“I mean who on earth builds a throne out of thousands of swords. I know Vetinari is a bastard for symbols and metaphorical meaning, but this really takes the pis—I mean tart.”

“Yes, the whole place could do with a bit of a spruce up, don’t you think?”

Oh yes dear, thought Vimes, the manic edge to his thoughts threatening to well up and bubble over into hysterical laughter. I dare say if you got some curtains measured up you could hide the view of half a burning kingdom, no problem…

He didn’t belong here. Neither of them did. But who could have ever predicted that that bloody dragon would return? I could, said a little voice in the back of his head. It had been waiting for all of this to end. Not necessarily the dragon of course, but for the careful world he and Sybil had built to shatter in a shower of fire and smoke and then the ice would pour back into his veins and Sam Vimes would cease to exist, because whatever man had existed before had died somewhere in an Ankh-Morpork gutter a million miles away…

What was it the old wizard had said? Something to do with stories and narrative need? About fitting into the holes of the pantaloons of the multiverse?

It didn’t matter now…all that mattered was that they were here now, summoned by whatever need had pulled them here and—oh yes—he looked up at the open hole where the palace roof ought to be. Three dragons looked down, as attentive as kittens with a ball of string. He tried not to think about the sound of their claws scraping over the stone or the way their eyes moved to follow him if he strayed too far from Sybil.

Mother of Dragons…

They’d shouted it through the streets, even as they burned. Mother of Dragons…breaker of chains, first of her name Her Grace, Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin-Vimes, The Duchess of Ankh …and Queen of the Iron Throne…

“I know what you’re thinking, Sam.”

“Do you, dear?” Same asked, letting his eyes drift from the dragons to her reassuring form, her blue evening gown streaked with soot, wig only just slightly askew.

“You’re thinking you want to go home…and I can’t say I blame you, but until the wizard chaps figure this out, I say we make the most of this… there’s a whole city out there Sam Vimes. You saw the mess of it when they opened the gates, you saw what those awful people did to their people…”

Vimes was vaguely aware of an audience gathering at the giant doors that hung on their hinges. Fine looking people, or at least people who thought they were very fine, rich robes singed and ruined in only the way a dragon burning your city can do. And all of them cautiously livid. There was something reassuringly familiar about that.

“Yes, dear. They do what all ruling classes do.” He turned his attention to the gathering crowd. “They piss down and call it plumbing.”

An old man wearing chains opened his mouth to protest, “I beg your pardon—“

“Yes you bloody should!” snapped Vimes, reaching for the cigar behind his ear that wasn’t there and beginning to pat down his pockets. “Call yourselves a tyranny? My gods what a shambles. Vetinari would have a fit at the state of this place. An absolute fit.”

Another woman, slightly older than Sybil, and almost as regal, turned what could only be defined as a look toward him. “And you both are, sir?”

“Oh do forgive me,” he said, with manic faux politeness, his ducal façade slipping into place like an anvil on thin ice, “hadn’t you heard? I would have thought that mob was awfully clear. This is the Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, First of her name Her Grace, Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin-Vimes, The Duchess of Ankh and Queen of the Iron Throne. And I’m her husband—“ Commander Vimes City Watch…the words died on his lips as new words funneled in through the back of his head, poured down by the cosmos in rich vibrant hues as the world finally knit together around him. He grinned and several people backed away.

“They call me, the Kingslayer. And I’m her Guard.”

Sybil smiled, that soft genteel smile that could light up rooms and made people feel warm inside. Overhead the dragons spat white hot plumes of flame, making everyone within a twenty foot radius feel very warm indeed.

“And you lot—” Vimes said, finally managing to pull a cigar from somewhere in his dented armor, holding it up to the still sizzling air and letting the tip self-combust into before taking a long heady drag—“have got some bloody explaining to do.”

MORE

(I’d love to, but you see, I’m already working on the Star Wars Discworld crossover Au for @leahelizabeth89, and I have about 50 WIPS in my darft folder and…and…shit *down the bunny hole we go*)

This is the best thing I have ever seen. Oh god Lady Sybil would just spend her days making sure the dragons were comfy and would go on and on about what a hardy breed they were. 

Can you imagine Vimes on the kings council?!Oh god what if the rest of the Watch got through as well.

WHAT IF VETINARI FOUND HIS WAY?!?!?!?!

 I just MUST know what Vetinari would do in Westoros !

 Oh god. I cannot breath I’m sitting here doing that scary laugh where there’s no sound because you can’t breath so you just flap your arms like a fucking seal. my face hurts from grinning. What have you done to me?

Probably the same thing @leahelizabeth89 did to me when she said “how do you think Star Wars would have turned out with Vetinari in it?” and I’m 3k down the plot tunnel, pickax in hand and flashlight strapped to my head.

As for more Westeros: Vetinari would walk in, picking his way through the crowd and great Sybil like the old friends that they are, and take his rightful place as the Queens Hand—after all he’s never wanted to be a King, so why should he start now? He’s invaluable of course, but it’s Sybil who guides the kingdom back to some semblance of sanity, through the kindness and patience wrought of years tending to creatures that tend to explode at random.

Little Finger would try to get the measure of Von Lipwig—newly instated to the Small Council as Vetinari’s spy—and come up short…of the hangman’s rope. As it turned out, he did not believe in angels. Neither did a lot of the small council, which was unfortunate, but not unforeseen. Spike takes over trade and the various different merchants guilds and foreign traders soon come to know the iron ring of her stiletto heels sparking over the exchange floor.

Arya Stark thought she wanted to join the Assassin Guild, until she sees the golden wolf following on the heels of the tall redheaded man who reminds her of someone she used to know…she makes captain within a year and walks the streets at night, taking light into dark places. The men and women she trains soon become known as Starkies—their motto Law Before Justice.

Hm.

Who else…Fred and Nobby never change. A city is a city and there’s still street theater to watch and  and cigarettes to smoke. But they both agree after the first week they’d do almost anything for a pint of Winkles, the beer here is piss.

This is amazing, and I can’t help but wonder what if Granny Weatherwax and the rest of the Lancre coven were there. I’m unfamiliar with Game of Thrones, but if there were magic users, none of them would probably survive UU in the good (bad) ol’ days. 

!! “For the night is dark and full of terrors!”

Abruptly the flames from the pyre went out, plunging the assembly in to shadows.

In the deafening silence, Granny cracked her knuckles, shoulders rolling like a prize fighter about to step into the ring and smiled at the priestess.

“Yea. Me.”

“Hey pal, ye think it’s funny like teh pick on wee lassies?”

Ramsey Bolton looked down, and then down again. “Who the fu—”

“THE BIG WEE HAG SENDS HER REGARDS!”

Please write something about Carrot at the Wall, organizing a match: Night´s Watch against Wildlings, or  how Reg Shoe freaks everybody out and please please please something about Susan Sto Helit!

Imagine a conversation between Tiffany and Arya though, two girls who had to grow up way too fast.

Added to my list!

Just imagine Ned, Robb, and Catelyn waking up to a voice that falls into their minds like slabs of concrete, saying IT’LL BE OKAY.

@thebibliosphere

Aaaaand now I’m crying.

Oh gods…my heart.

White Walker Auditors.

Fireflies photograph in trees with long time exposure.

i think of this ProZD video constantly its always so fucking funny

So, I have a big advice post to write, but until I have the spoons, I want to warn everyone now who has legally changed their first name:

Your credit score may be fucked up and you need to:

I am about to apply for a mortgage and learned that as of 2 weeks ago:

Credit scores influence everything from big home/car loans to insurance rates to job and housing applications.

And for whatever reason, the 3 bureaus that have the power to destroy your life are shockingly fragile when it comes to legally changing one's first name.

So, yeah. Once I get this mess cleaned up for myself, I have a big guide in the works if you find yourself in the same predicament. But with the mass trans migration out of oppressive states, odds are there are a lot of newly renamed people who are about to have a nasty shock when applying for new housing.

Take care, folks.

Absolutely insane lines to just drop in the middle of an academic text btw. Feeling so normal about this.

[ A Critical History of English Literature, Vol. 1, Prof. David Daiches, first published in 1960 ]

You know, It doesn't matter if you belive in God or Science or Both, trans people are natural and awesome.

God? Well, we humans are made in God's image. We're all a little figurine of the Creator, and we Create. We create ourselves, our environments, our situations... God made the world and Man gave names to all the animals. We catalog and explore and determine and change. We make the wine and the bread, God made the grapes and the wheat. Of course we make our genders just as much as we make houses and clothes and stories and names. There's a bit of the divine in all of us and it's the part of us that Creates and Loves.

And Science? Oh boy! We are tool-users of the highest order. Changing things is just what we do. We built the pyramids and the dog and the horse and the computer. We've built cities out of swamps and lakes and put flags on the moon. Changing things so they work better for us is just our very nature. We heal our broken bones and build glasses and hearing aids and wheelchairs, because fuck our limitations. We invented corn and the Amazon rainforest. Transformation is in our nature just as much as being bipedal and featherless. We see a world and a body and a mind that doesn't work for us, and we change it. We build roads and skyscrapers and prosthetics and drugs, and the resulting humanity is better. We spent thousands of years building our world and our knowledge of how to change it and we're very good at it by now.

My point is, it doesn't matter if you think we're a unique creation by an omnipotent creator or a hairless ape that evolved to be particularly good at being social tool-users who can cook and throw things, our nature is Creation and Transformation. Of course some humans would be transgender and non-binary and generally genderqueer: those things are just reflections of what it means to be human.

God gave Adam the first tongs so he could smith, and the ape knapped a stone into a point so a spear could be deadlier than just a rock. Transformation is the core of humanity. Of ourselves, our environments, our tools, our stories. There's never been a humanity that was unchanging and rigid: we're not made of stone. We're made of clay and wood and reeds. Endlessly shapeable and cuttable and weavable. We decide what shapes and purposes we are meant for.

CS Lewis's explanation of why oral poetic epics cannot be mined for fanfiction titles is not going to stop me from mining Paradise Lost for fanfiction titles. But I respect the explanation

Right after the above excerpt, Clive Staples uses his insane charisma stat to persuade me of something I'm normally dubious of ("Poetic Diction"):

seeing the terms “bad rep” and “good rep” applied to media that was created by and for an in-group makes me want to eat glass

“not sure if this is a good representation of the trans community :/“ right well a trans person made it, and they made it for other trans people, so. perhaps that logic is not applicable here. must we live our entire creative lives under the watchful eye of Cisgender Scrutiny? how can you compare self-expression to willful misrepresentation lmao

There's this idea, fairly common in society, that mental illness is for teens and up. Children are happy little creatures, generally, right? Sometimes they're abused and the trauma can make them mentally ill, but that's not common.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Children are new to the world and vulnerable, and they don't know what's normal and what isn't. They need people who are more experienced watching out for problems they might be having, and listening when they talk about having problems. If you can, try to be the person who perceives them, and tells them that things can be better.

These are just some of the tags on this post.

Even making this post, I honestly didn't expect this massive of a response

None of us are alone in this. And that's horrible. But it's not as bad as thinking we are when we aren't.

IN A WORLD WHERE BEAUTY AND ATTRACTIVENESS HAVE BECOME SO COMMONPLACE AND MUNDANE THE EXCEPTIONAL UGLINESS HAS BECOME DIVINE

I SAW AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR A CAR THAT LOOKS LIKE EVERY OTHER CAR AND THEY COMPARED IT TO A UNUSUAL UGLY LITTLE VEHICLE AND ITS STRANGENESS WAS FAR MORE CAPTIVATING THAN THE SLEEK BORING CAR THE AD WAS ACTUALLY FOR

Umberto Eco, On Ugliness

BEAUTY IS FINITE, UGLINESS IS INFINITE LIKE GOD