needle/pin sharpener.

no really, squeeze it. Does it feel like it’s got sand in it? is’s sharpening sand. Stab the tip of your needle into it back and forth and it’ll help put a sharp edge back on a pin or needle that’s been blunted by use, or has a little bit of rust on it. It can’t fix anything worse then a little of either, and won’t work on something REALLY blunted, but its a lifesaver.

also it is a pepper

it's so your tomato doesn't get lonely :)

[ID: a picture of a tomato shaped pincushion with a pepper hanging from it with an arrow pointing to the pepper, titled "the purpose of the strawberry on the tomato pincushion". /end ID].

So you know the joke that Polnareff has the worst luck in Part 3 and attracts the most Stand Users? I wanted to see if that was true so I made a pie chart recording every single time the Stardust Crusaders encounter an enemy Stand User.

RULES ARE SIMPLE.

1. For every Enemy Stand User one of the Crusader’s encounter, they will get a Point

2. Points are given to whoever attacked or was attacked by the Enemy User first. Other Crusaders who attack, are attacked, or help with the fight after that initial action will receive Encounter Points. Crusaders who were present but did not assist will not receive Encounter Points

       EX: During the Tower of Gray fight, Jotaro, Kakyoin, Avdol and Joseph are present when he appears. Jotaro attacks and is attacked by the Stand first, Avdol almost uses Magician’s Red to help but doesn’t because it could blow up the plane, and Kakyoin defeats it with Hierophant Green. Jotaro would get the Point, but only Kakyoin would get an Encounter Point.

3. It is possible for multiple people to get a Point from one opponent if they are attacked as a group or if the actions happen at roughly the same time

       EX: when Polnareff first attacks the group, he attacks Joseph but Avdol immediately attacks him with Magician’s Red. Both get the point.

4. I will only count encounters that happen in the “present” of SDC, meaning encounters like Avdol, Kakyoin and Polnareff’s first meetings with Dio or Joseph and Avdol fighting Iggy won’t receive points

5. I will only count a second encounter with the same Stand User after their “episode” has concluded. Multi Part episodes with the same Enemy User and encounters like Oingo/Boingo and the final fight with Dio will count as a singular encounter for the sake of this rule

There are also a few….. difficult situations that I wasn’t sure how to count, so to avoid confusion I’ll explain them here:

With those rules and explanations in place and way too much time spent combing through every single fight, and I learned a few things.

1) The jokes about Polnareff having the worst luck are correct, given the fact he encountered a THIRD of all their enemies first

2) Iggy only contributed his last few episodes

3) Avdol and Kakyoin were done dirty and should’ve been allowed to fight more

Maybe I’ll make one for Diamond is Unbreakable later.

The exact who fought who, assisted with what, and the Encounter Point pie chart will be under the cut

Seguir leyendo

[ID: a pie chart, titled "SDC Enemy Stand Meetings". Underneath are the colors of the pieces exolained: Jotaro - dark purple, Kakyoin - green, Polnareff - silver, Avdol - dark red, Joseph - light purple, Iggy - black. The biggest piece is Polnareff's with 33.3%, followed by Joseph and Jotaro with 24.4%. Then Kakyoin with 8.9% and Avdol and Iggy, both with 4.4%.

ID 2: a screenshot of several tags:

Jjba. I love this. Also yeah (in all caps). Abdul was done so dirty this is ridiculous. He's been here since episode 1 and he has the same points as Iggy. /end ID].

[ID for the image under the cut:

Another pie chart for the encounters and fights, also titled "SDC Enemy Stand Meetings". The colors are the same: dark purple (Jotaro), green (Kakyoin), silver (Polnareff), red (Avdol), light purple (Joseph) and black (Iggy). This time the pie pieces are a bit more balanced. The biggest piece is Jotaro's with 25%, followed by Kakyoin with 22.9%. Then Avdol with 20.8%, Joseph with 14.6% and Polnareff with 12.5% and then Iggy with 4.2% /end ID].

something about the wave of Alfred Molina thirst makes me think of that "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny" essay. shan't elaborate right now but give me a moment.

I'm sorry, the what essay?

so glad you asked

it was this article, "We All Simp for Alfred Molina" by Chingy Nea, that made me think of it, particularly this paragraph that one assumes the Nea must have composed whilst drooling like a cartoon wolf:

it's Nea's appreciation for Molina's physicality, specifically the fond attention drawn to his visible paunch, that made me think of R.S. Benedict's essay "Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny." it's a good read but also a long one, so I'll summarize: Benedict posits that current standards of American attractiveness stem from post-9/11 anxiety - "When a nation feels threatened, it gets swole," she writes - and has created a national mentality of bodies as commodities to be honed to perfection without indulging in any of the pleasure a body can bring, a vessel disjointed from any sense of self and meant only to be looked at with awe.

she opens particularly by noting the very particular brand of sexless-ness that pervades mainstream media, leading to action heroes whose beautiful faces and implausibly sculpted muscles are attractive in theory but also seem to exist in a world apart from anything like genuine sensuality. their bodies are inhuman in their perfection, and this comes at the cost of doing anything as human as fucking. to quote:

Benedict mostly speculates about the neutered nature of DC and Marvel's movie characters, but they're hardly the only blockbusters falling into this trend. Alison Wilmore's "Why Doesn't The Rock Get to Make Out More Onscreen?" calls attention to this with a particular focus on Disney's new Jungle Cruise movie, describing Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt's roles as "characters who are to Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen as Funko Pops are to people," with their inevitable kiss playing out "as though they’re dolls whose heads are being smashed together by a child enacting a rudimentary idea of passion."

similarly to Benedict's point, Wilmore notes that "There’s a striking divide between the body that Johnson is so famous for and the characters who are supposed to inhabit it... his characters rarely if ever seem to take pleasure in this physicality beyond its capacity to intimidate and serve as a spectacle."

and by now you're probably saying okay Makenzie that's swell, but what the fuck does this have to do with people thirsting over Alfred Molina? well, look at him.

take in the tits and paunch Nea loves so much, and compare Molina's body with the kind that have dominated the biggest movies of the last decade or so, since the MCU set the tone for the future of the superhero genre. Quoth Benedict again:

Molina's Doc Ock isn't bland; he has character in the form of features that are, increasingly, written off as too ugly or undesirable for film. I think the reason people may be reacting so strongly to him nearly two decades after the movie's release is that a pretty-normal looking body has now become a spectacle unto itself, by virtue of being so normal.

the current crop of superhero stars are exercised, waxed, dieted, dehydrated, and quite probably steroided into something the average person could never achieve on their own, a body that's fun to look at but is ultimately alien to anything most people will ever experience. whereas what we're looking at with Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is something like a body that many people actually have, a body that many people have known and loved, a body that, frankly, many people have had sex with - certainly more than have ever had sex with, say, Chris Evans' Steve Rogers all hairless and shiny fresh out of getting shot up with super soldier serum.

it's a sexy body because it's a palpably human body, in a genre that increasingly shuns exactly that.

plus, you know, those are just some nice tits.

For us, cutaway cars are always worth a closer look, here’s an amazing see-through 1970 Ford Torino.

For us, cutaway cars are always worth a closer look, here’s an amazing see-through 1970 Ford Torino.

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!” 

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.

Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirable genetic traits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.

Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.

it’s so bizarre when animated American films are set in a certain location and then only certain characters have the accents of that place. It makes no damn sense!! like

WHY IS SHE MORE FRENCH THAN THE REST OF THEM???

Really? In the German version a lot of them/almost all of them talk with a German accent🤔 - except Linguini ofc cause we can't have a hero/protagonist with an accent /s

Since Friday the 13th, there is an amazing feminist French movie, Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile (I’m Not An Easy Man), directed by Eleonore Pourriat on Netflix. It’s about a macho man who got hit on the head and wakes up in a world where gender roles are reversed. Women are in charge and he is treated by them like he used to treat women in his/our reality. It seems to be a light-hearted romcom but it’s in fact a bitter and on point criticism of our society.

Eleonore Pourriat also directed the short movie Majorité Opprimée, which inspired Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpfaza-Mw4I

This is the kind of movie Tumblr needs to support and talk about!

I would like to add that in an interview, the director said specifically that the world represented in her film is not how she thinks the world would be if women ran it, but was precisely a device used to highlight how each and every small action in woman’s life is affected by patriarchy. 

Q&A: If Cowardice is the Absence of Courage, Clichés are the Absence of Detail

Well, you know there is the saying, “only fools rush in.”

The issue with the labels of brave versus cowardly is not that the issue is complex, but rather that people tend to apply them to actions instead of motivation. The same action can be brave or cowardly or neither, depending on who is doing it and why. 

I’ll break it down for you:

Coward – Cowards always take the easy way out.

“Cowardice is a trait wherein excessive fear prevents an individual from taking a risk or facing danger. It is the opposite of courage. As a label, “cowardice” indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge. “ – Wikipedia

Whether you will be a coward or not depends on the challenge you’re facing, those challenges can be physical (commonly understood as part of physical conflict and violence), but they’re also emotional, social, or facing what causes you fear or anxiety. A coward is defined by specifics, not abstracts.

Example: a great hero who goes on a quest to save the world in order to escape the emotional difficulties of dealing with their significant other or loved ones is, ironically, a coward.

Example: an anti-social individual who is circumspect and distant from strangers, but not afraid of social interaction isn’t a coward.

Example: an individual who rushes in because being called a coward negatively affects their self-image is… a coward.

There are plenty of times when people are called cowards when they aren’t, usually this has to do with confusion over action versus motivation and cultural bullshit about courage.

Courage – Merriam Webster’s definition of courage is “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.”

I think the key word for you to understand is “difficulty.” Courage is not about being fearless, it’s about facing what you’re afraid of. In a limited scope, only the individual can define what actions are courageous for themselves. No one else can tell you what to be afraid of, or define what’s difficult for you. If you are someone for whom the words and labels applied to you by others define who you are, then rejecting those cultural standards may be courageous.

You want to be careful about saying bravery is the absence of fear, or logic. Stupidity isn’t courage. Someone who lashes out because they’re afraid isn’t more brave than the person who runs. Running at your problem can be the same as running away. When you don’t consider the problem, you’re still practicing avoidance. Building up walls, filling your day up with pointless tasks, putting off dealing with what’s bothering you, those are all symptoms.

A character who isn’t bothered by or afraid of physical conflict isn’t brave or courageous. There are plenty of characters, like people, who will use physical conflict or action to escape from what makes them emotionally uncomfortable.

If you’re retreating into what makes you comfortable, you’re not being brave. If you’re taking stupid risks trying to prove you’re not scared of something, you’re probably afraid of it. 

Example: adrenaline junkies aren’t brave, they’re looking for a high.

If your character is talking back to a villain who would kill anyone else who wasn’t the protagonist for doing the same thing, they aren’t being brave… they’re engaging in author sanctioned stupidity. (I mean it too, there are plenty of authors who can’t handle their protagonist being powerless and use witty comebacks as a means of restoring control. Undercutting their villain, and the scene’s tension, in the process.)

How do you write it?

This part isn’t easy.

Writing characters who are brave versus characters who are cowards requires sitting down and figuring out what your characters are afraid of. You have to figure out what situations and scenarios are physically, emotionally, or morally challenging for them. That’s complicated, usually requiring a fair amount of self-reflection. However, it’s the only way to escape clichés.

No one likes dealing with uncomfortable situations or making challenging choices. If you use your writing as an outlet for your personal fantasies then writing characters who are courageous can be difficult because what is uncomfortable disrupts that fantasy. The power fantasy, for example, is tenuous and reliant on a narrative where things aren’t specific even if they’re difficult emotionally. Fears begin to define a character and the more a character becomes an individual, the more difficult it is for the reader to insert themselves into the story.

Depending on what you’re reading, many authors will steer toward the generic rather than specific or gloss over the fears entirely. We can make as many jokes as we like about “Pants” the protagonist, but the vague outline and generics serve a specific narrative purpose. 

If you’re using a novel where the protagonist is Pants for reference, then you might run into difficulties when writing. The narrative outline will steer you into generics, specifically for your protagonists. Pants can’t really be brave because Pants isn’t a person, they’re a simulacrum cobbled together from stereotypes. A shadowy outline of a person designed for self-insertion. While this is an intentional choice on the part of the author, it won’t help you when you’re writing.

Your characters are built from you, so the best point of reference is always going to be yourself. Which means self-reflection, acknowledging situations social or otherwise which make you or made you uncomfortable.

It is easier, for example, to have a conversation about your emotions and struggles with a complete stranger than someone who knows you. The reason is that the stranger doesn’t know you, can’t affect you, and you don’t need to see them every day so the conversation can’t have any lasting impact on your life. If you’re afraid of change, of the consequences of voicing your opinion, of those you care about disregarding what you have to say, then this can be a safe release which ultimately changes nothing. Is this courage? Not really, no.

Delving into our own weaknesses isn’t easy, it isn’t comfortable, and it isn’t always fun. Poking at the wounds inside your mind or figuring out what you’ve been avoiding, what makes you feel insecure or unsure. Then taking those feelings to your writing, to the scenarios you’re structuring. You ask yourself questions about what your characters are feeling. If it’s hard, then why is it hard? If they’re running away, why are they running away? If they’re charging forward, why are they charging forward? What motivates their actions?

Specificity combats clichés. Clichés are by their nature generic, a character who provides specific detail to make the cliché about their personal experiences isn’t.

-Michi

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Q&A: If Cowardice is the Absence of Courage, Clichés are the Absence of Detail was originally published on How to Fight Write.

that is some next level knot magic.

 it isn’t though!!! it’s because most relationships aren’t worth the effort. The “sweater curse” is actually most commonly called the “BOYFRIEND sweater curse.” Which=heteronormative, but the curse most often falls on a woman knitting a sweater for a boyfriend. Before she finishes the sweater, they break up - pop culture would have you believe it’s because the boyfriend freaks out do to the weirdness/clinginess of having a sweater made for you, but I think knitters are wiser than that.

It’s because after spending serious £££ on materials, and then HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF LABOR on the creation of the item, with every stitch a prayer of totally focused intent, creating a large display of technical skill - it is then gifted to a non-knitter who does NOT APPRECIATE the work/effort/skill/cost/TIME it took to make it, and in fact thinks you’re a bit weird and making a big deal out of a piece of clothing, and after they go “oh thanks” and shove your creation in the cupboard next to a sweater they got for £15 at an M&S sale, then they never wear your sweater because it’s too tight because when you asked them how their favorite sweaters usually fit they said “I ‘unno” and when you measured them for the fifth time and asked, rather tersely, if they had enough room in the chest, they said “I guess,” and then if pressed they say they don’t really like the sweater design, but then you point out that they were supposed to participate in helping you design it and they say they don’t really care about how things look, and when you say that you tried to match it to their other clothes so how can they hate it, then they say that honestly their mother still buys all their clothes because they hate going shopping, and that they hate all their other clothes too, well. That’s when a sensible knitter goes “Fuck this shit. And you know what? Fuck this man.”

This is what happens when someone posts in a knitting forum “Attack of the sweater curse!” - this is the usual story. It has a rigid plot. It is as old as myth.

That’s when you look at the time you spent and realize, “I could LITERALLY have written the first draft of a novel instead of doing this.” That’s when you go “I could have taken that £200 and bought myself a new wardrobe.” That’s when you go “I could have taken all that intent, all that willpower, all that creative force, and laid down some fucking witchcraft, all right?” That’s when you go “I basically spent 100 hours straight thinking about this bastard while making something amazing for him, and I have no evidence that he ever spent 10 hours of his life thinking about me.”

And “I could spend this time and energy and money in making myself an enormous, intricate heirloom silk shawl with just a touch of cashmere, in elvish twists and leafy lace in all the colors of the night, shot through with subtly glittering stars, warm in winter and cool and summer and light as a lover’s kiss on the shoulders, suitable for draping over my arms at weddings or wrapping myself in to watch the sea, a lace-knotted promise to myself that I will keep for my entire life and gift to my favorite granddaughter when I die, and she will wear it to keep alive my memory - but instead I have this sweater, and this fuckboy.”

The sweater curse is a lesson that the universe gives to a knitter at an important point in their life. It is a gift.

Knitting a sweater for a husband or wife generally doesn’t call down the curse, because the relationship is meant to be stronger than 4-ply.

(Although I say this, but I’ve taken over 5 years to finish a pair of mittens for my husband, because he casually asked me to do something customized with the cables, and I still can’t get the math to work on the right hand.)

this post is so much better with that commentary

Fuck yes.

Hey @elodieunderglass! How’re the mittens coming along?

It is 2020, we recently marked 9 years of marriage and no progress has been made

world heritage post

@vikinglumberjack What’s your take?

Knitters should be banned from giving gifts

I mean, it sounds like if your boyfriend isn’t interested in getting a sweater, don’t spend a hundred dollars and dozens of hours on… making him a sweater?

Or better yet. ASK HIM WHAT HE WANTS! Hell he might WANT a sweater, socks, or a tie, just not one that might not fit right, costs hundreds of man hours, and that is over 90% guilt and relationship pressure.

I’ve seen this post a few times on my dash but I don’t think I’ve commented.  It takes for granted the value that intimate partners must share each other’s interests, and goes further to suggest that someone who doesn’t is just self-centered and unloving.  There’s room to argue that “if you love someone you’ll respect what’s important to them” but it’s clear that the knitter in the relationship is making a lot of assumptions without taking the time to talk them over until after they’ve frustrated themselves.  It’s also clear they haven’t taken the time to communicate how much work they put in before, again, judging and accusing the boyfriend for not implicitly understanding them.  The curse here is a toxic relationship standard that honestly seems to be accepted and encouraged by our society.

Sometimes it’s the knitter that is the curse.

A bit of both, I think. Large-scale gifts pretty much REQUIRE communication and attention to what the recipient values, and if somebody doesn’t display enough interest to answer your questions about what they want in a [thing], that’s a pretty solid hint that they might not be interested enough in it to be worth getting/making it for them.

Speaking to the “clingy” thing, I view the act of getting someone a present they’re not interested in (non-accidentally, I mean) to be an act of apathy that climbs toward being a calculated insult as the expense and labor-intensiveness increases. Nothing says “I care about the idea of you, but don’t honestly give a shit about you or your preferences” by sinking large amounts of time or money into something that’s “for” them but brings them no joy, or could have easily brought them joy if a few things were different but the giver didn’t bother to ask. To somebody who doesn’t value sweaters, the transmutation of hundreds of hours of effort into a sweater instead of anything else that amount of time (or a fraction of it!) could have become instead feels like a bit of a letdown.

Historically, back before industrialization, sweaters had a different value—it was understood that a sweater represented the handwork of carding and spinning and dying and knitting that went into its creation because there was no other way of making a sweater and the idea of a special sweater being an expression of a wife’s love for her husband came in the context of sweaters having that recognized value—plus, the lack of electric heating, North Face parkas, automobiles, and other keep-you-warm technology meant that your sweater quality had a vivid and direct connection with how warm you were—and now, in the world we live in today, much of this has been lost; both knitting and sweaters are entirely optional, and this does have an effect on a handmade sweater’s usefulness as a romantic expression.

Nowadays it’s a niche interest, both in the making and the wearing, and while no knitter is ever obligated to accommodate someone’s disinterest in the pricing of a knitted object, it’s bad form to use the giving of a gift to demand appreciation consistent with the giver’s valuation of it.

On the other hand, it’s on the recipient to be honest from the beginning about what they care about, and if somebody offers to make you something effort-intensive, cost-intensive, or both, you owe it to them to be upfront about whether it’s something you want enough to take their time and effort to that extent. If somebody were to offer to make me a handstitched Regency dress, or a built-from-the-ground-up rat-rod car, or a Brutalist garden bench, it’s on me to say “thank you for the offer, but I can’t appreciate that (specific thing) enough to justify your effort on it.” If they want to make it, are making it anyway, et cetera? It’s better that it go to someone who’s in a better position to love it as it deserves, and I don’t do anyone involved any good by accepting it and enduring it enough to fake gratitude. And I wouldn’t want to spend even ten hours, let alone a hundred or more, making something for someone who knows I’m making it for them and knows they don’t actually want it.

This is, absolutely, a failure in the socialization we receive in this society. There’s an idea that significant others are supposed to share interests, to appreciate and love automatically anything created by a person you care for, to anticipate correctly what sort of gift someone wants and get it right without prompting, and to happily accumulate anything given to you. And this is, largely, unrealistic and kind of wasteful and a poor distribution of priorities, leading to unnecessary confusion and resentment.

It should be okay to support and admire someone’s hobby or skillset without particularly loving it or wanting its products, and it should be okay to be clear about what you want and what would be wasted on you, and it should be okay to not want a particular gift rather than take it because it’s being offered to you, and it should be okay to ask about the priorities and preferences of a person to whom you want to give a gift, and honestly it would be really awesome for crafters to trade skills with each other to get gifts made that their recipients are in a better position to appreciate.

It’s not as direct, maybe, if you knit the sweater not for your boyfriend but for the boyfriend of the non-knitter who is forging your boyfriend a set of damascus-bladed kitchen knives more in line with his interests, or if my bestie trades the making of a Regency gown to someone who’ll make a Rococo-era menswear suit that I’ll actually wear on occasion, but it probably makes for a more solid relationship than trying to power through and ignore and yet take personally the parts where someone doesn’t love a thing as intensely as you do. Those will happen. What matters is how you address them.

To me, “I’m buying something for you and so I will seek out all your preferences because I want it to be right for you and valued by you” is SO MUCH MORE romantic and thoughtful than “I spent $$$ on this thing for you, suck it up if you don’t like parts of it I could have done differently but didn’t.” And that’s also true when what you make isn’t the sort of thing they want.

And if they don’t want a thing enough to do the small work of expressing their preferences on part of it … mayyyybe they don’t want the thing enough for you to do the big work of making it.

“If you love someone you’ll respect what’s important to them” goes both ways. The giver has an obligation here too.

Less sad headcanon time!

Capricorn is actually the protagonist of Fenoglio’s Inkheart.  He’s the title character, the one with a heart as black as ink.  He’s the one Fenoglio is the most in awe of meeting.  In Inkspell, he hardly remembers such major characters in Dustfinger’s life as Roxane and Cloud Dancer, but definitely knows Firefox and the Piper, who worked for Capricorn during the time his book took place.

What its like to have a “lazy eye”

I’m bored so here’s some info in case anyone wanted to write a character with a lazy eye or smth like that. I can only speak from my own experience so keep that in mind. 

- I wasn’t born with it, it developed over a period of time. My dad said he watched as my right eye just slowly started drifting over the length of a few weeks when I was around 2. 

- Wore an eyepatch as a kid over my good eye. The eyepatches were really cool, they had rainbows and bears on it. 

- The purpose of wearing it over your good eye is so the vision in the lazy eye improves (I’m still wearing glasses though and my vision is unequal). 

- had to take eye drops as a kid. 10/10 would not recommend. 

- Having a lazy eye kinda gave me a broader range of view. If a regular person has a field of vision reaching 180 degrees, I can see more than that. Very useful for spying on people. 

- When looking at a book, I can see both pages at the same time and almost read from them but it’s very difficult. 

- I can also merge both sides of the book together so it’ll look like one page in my vision. 

- For some reason, my lazy eye can not stand sunlight at all. I walk into a patch of sunlight, it’s gonna close. 

- Alternatively, my lazy eye sees better in the dark. I’m known by my friends for having “night vision.” 

- In class, I cover the lazy eye to see the board better.

- a lazy eye has poor vision compared to the other one.

- a lazy eye isn’t constant. I can look perfectly straight without my eye drifting and pass for normal. 

- I can’t control it well when I’m tired which has freaked out quite a few freshman in the past. 

- Kids find it especially difficult to keep a lazy eye under control.

- Wearing glasses also helps me to look straight but now that I’ve become dependent on my glasses, when I take them off my eyes are difficult to control. 

- looking at a screen for too long will always make my lazy eye red first. Not sure why that is. 

- lazy eye gets super irritated and stings first before the other one does. 

- when watching tv or looking at a screen, my eye will drift. I can control it but having my lazy eye drift allows me to emerge myself into the screen. Would def recommend doing when watching tv, it’s awesome. 

- I can’t wink. My lazy eye will drift and it ends up being more horrifying than seductive. 

- I can’t roll my eyes. I could but my eye drifts which will freak everyone out as well. 

- I always win staring contests because I use my lazy eye as an ace. At the last moment, I let it drift. Never fails to freak out the other person.

- the trick mentioned above doesn’t work on family though. I would show my lazy eye to babies and they wouldn’t get scared. They get used to it and just try to either copy it or ignore it. 

- basically a homemade Halloween costume. I just gotta put on some torn, raggedy clothes and I’m a zombie. 

- Lot of people bully me for it but honestly fuck them, they’re just jealous of my enhanced field of vision plus my ability to see better in the dark. 

FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT PERCY WEASLEY, WHO WAS THOUGHT TO BE STUFFY AND SERIOUS, WAS THE LAST PERSON WHO MADE FRED WEASLEY LAUGH. 

FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT PERCY WEASLEY IS STILL A TITANIC ASSHOLE WHO DID NOT EARN REDEMPTION.

EXCUSE ME? YOU COME ONTO MY POST? MY POST ABOUT PERFECT PERCY AND YOU SAY THIS? OH NO HONEY, YOU’RE NOT GETTING OFF THAT EASY.

Percy Weasley 100% deserved his redemption and you want to know why?! Too bad, I’m going to tell you. For his whole life, Percy Weasley was made fun of, he was teased by all his siblings, constantly the butt of jokes. Whenever he was proud of his accomplishments, his family (besides his mother) shut him down. Prefect? Fred and George made fun of him for bragging, for being excited that he lived up to Bill and Charlie’s shadow. Head Boy? Fred and George teased him, stole his badge because they thought it was funny. Percy was so happy and proud of himself and his brothers tore him down. He was pushed aside for Bill or Charlie or even Ron and Ginny. Sure, his mother was proud of him, but his brothers made sure they made his life hell. When he got his job at the Ministry he was so excited. Right of school he got a job he loved, a job he was sure he was good at. He talked about it a lot but that’s what happens when you’re excited. His parents were proud, but again, his siblings made sure to tease him. When Crouch didn’t know his name, his siblings laughed, Fred and George sent him dragon dung. 

Then he gets the job of Junior Assistant to the Minister. He’s proud because he’s 2 years out of school and has this prestigious position. Of course he’s going to want to share with his family. What do they do? Tell him his hard work meant nothing, that the Minister was using him (and sure, that was probably true, but Percy was so excited). He saw that he and his family shared two very different views and opinions, some words were said, and Percy left. Reminds me of another beloved character that never gets shit about leaving his family from the fandom. Any guesses who? If you said Sirius Black you are correct! Like Sirius, he left home and the family he clearly no longer saw eye to eye with. That’s not a problem. He felt as though he was in a toxic environment, and honestly he was. I do not blame him for leaving his family even if they were for the wrong reasons. (but why does Percy get shit for leaving a toxic family when Sirius doesn’t? interesting) Now we don’t know what happened when he was at the Ministry. He wrote a letter to Ron that was a bit rude, but we’re also seeing this from Harry’s limited POV. Maybe Percy regretted leaving, maybe he loved his freedom and never wanted to go home. We just don’t know. He finally does come home for Christmas in 1996 (HBP), where he openly welcomed by his mother. He was being used by Scrimgeour, but he went. While his mother was welcoming, his siblings are not. He leaves with mashed parsnips in his face. Did he want to be there? No idea, but he went. How do you think he felt leaving? Probably awful. He didn’t go to Bill and Fleur’s wedding, but it was clear from the way his family treated him the year before that even if he did go, no one wanted him there.

The Battle of Hogwarts comes and Percy comes back. Yes, comes back. He went back to the family he left, he apologized for leaving and for being ‘family disowning, ministry loving, power hungry moron’ (as Fred put it), which he takes full blame for being. What happens next? Fred welcomes him back. Then his parents. Then George. They did not need to do this, but they did because they were family and they still loved each other. Percy fights in the Battle and ends up going up against Pius. He makes the “Hello, Minister, did I mention that I’m resigning!” joke which shows that his limited view has been expanded. He finally saw what was wrong with this Ministry, with what was happening around him (though this may not all be his fault, he surrounded himself with people who also had very limited knowledge and views). When Fred is shown dead, it is Percy who is crying over his body, Percy who tries to protect his body and hide it. Wonder how guilty he felt after this happened because he made Fred laugh and then Fred dies. We don’t know what happens to Percy after this but we clearly know he has a very fierce love of his family and that he was really and truly sorry. 

So TLDR; Percy loves his family and was very sorry and hurt by them. He 100% deserved his redemption even if you don’t think so. And if you don’t, don’t comment on other people’s posts about him saying rude things about Percy because you will be proven wrong. Thank you and have a good day. 

Honestly, if my family shut me down for every single good thing that happened to me, that I earned, I’d leave too. Staying loyal to people who constantly ignore or make fun of your position is exhausting. I hated Percy at first too, but then I realized that if I was in his position, I wouldn’t act any different. No one needs that kind of toxicity in their life.

It’s very easy to understand why Sirius leaves his toxic family because most of his family members are arrogant racist classist shitlords and shitladies and the Weasleys are the antithesis to that. But it doesn’t mean their worldviews and attitudes are perfect, either.

As for Percy’s letter, from Harry’s PoV, it’s horrible.  From the perspective of an older sibling?  It is 100% understandable.

Let’s look at things from Percy’s PoV where Ron’s friendship with Harry is concerned:

Harry then shows up at the end of the tournament with the dead body of his classmate/rival, claiming that Voldemort, who everybody knew was dead, had somehow done it.

Honestly, Percy is kind of more than a little justified in wanting Harry to stay tf away from his little brother.  And then you take into account the way that once he’s at the Ministry and not at school, the conversation around The Potter Boy takes on a much different tone.  It becomes easy for Percy to look back on all their adventures and overlook the heroic things like saving Ginny, and to start seeing Harry Potter as dangerous.  (Because the truth is, Harry is.  It is very dangerous to be friends with Harry Potter.)

I’m not saying the letter was right, but it was incredibly understandable.

Especially if you take into account that, for all the crap they give him, Percy is actually protective of his family up until the point that they drive him away.  Think about his early childhood–unlike Ron and the Twins, he’s old enough to remember some of the war, but unlike Bill and Charlie, he would’ve been too young to know details.  Just that there were big dangerous things, and you had to obey whatever rules someone shouted at you very quickly and without question, because that’s what you teach young children to do in dangerous situations.  When Ginny’s gone in CoS, Percy takes it the hardest out of all of them.  And people say he got off light, that oh, he should’ve died instead, but no, man.  He got the harshest punishment–his little brother dying right in front of him.

I also want to add that percy was the only one who apologised when he came back - his family DIDN’T. none of them owned up to what assholes they’d been and apologised to percy, they just let him take ALL the blame. as someone who’s been in percy’s situation multiple times - taking the blame and apologising to my bullies for the sake of just getting over the issue and moving on - i can also guarantee that this is a recipe for CONTINUED BULLYING. it lets the bullies off the hook and signals that their behaviour is okay, so they continue to do it. we don’t know if this is the first time percy’s had to do this or not, but consider a) it’s not the first time and he did it anyway because he loves his family enough to want to be with them in this incredibly dangerous time, because losing them while on bad footing is the worse option or b) it’s the first time and he doesn’t know that after this, the family is very likely to fall back into the same behavioural patterns. these patterns are fricking hard to break, y'all. it’s the kind of thing that requires conscious effort and…sorry to say, but there’s nothing in canon that points towards that possibility. percy haters can fuck right off.

excellent, excellent post!! one thing i want to add is that in CoS, percy is shown as constantly fussing over ginny. he’s so fiercely protective of his little siblings that the letter to ron, although misguided, could never be coming from anywhere other than the best of intentions. and percy’s actions at the battle of hogwarts and the way he refused to let go of fred’s body are very consistent with what we’ve seen of his diligence and protectiveness.

another thing in CoS—the one time percy does something for himself that doesn’t involve studying/leadership, getting a girlfriend, his younger siblings (yes, including ron and even ginny very briefly!) all make fun of him. he can’t even get away with a “normal teenager” kind of thing, because they’ve already decided their position on him. whichever way you look at it, that’s bullying.

also, percy is only a fifth year at the time the series starts! so at the battle of hogwarts, he’s 21. (his birthday is in august; he’s only about a year and a half older than the twins.) when he comes home and has parsnips flung at his face, he’s 20. when he writes that letter to ron, he’s 19. when he gets his apparition licence and shows off by apparating to breakfast, he’s just turned 18. when he gets his first job, he’s 17 and fresh out of hogwarts. of course it’s the coolest thing he’s ever done! of course he’s going to take a boss who takes him half-seriously over a family who barely takes him seriously at all. my point is, he’s young. he’s a kid, and he makes mistakes. give him a goddamn break!

one final point: while we’re on the percy love train, don’t forget he got twelve O.W.L.s. that’s the maximum number of O.W.L.s you can get! that’s divination, care of magical creatures, muggle studies, the lot! he must’ve been using a time turner all throughout the events of the first book (and for two years prior!) and yet there is no indication that he’s cracked under that pressure at all! go percy!

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

Percy is such an interesting character to me, because he has such duality to him. He’s passionate, yet stuffy. He’s smart, yet clueless. He’s a leader (prefect, headboy, triwizard judge), but a follower of laws/the ministry. He’s accomplished, but highly insecure. He’s proud, but can humble himself so fully. He and Ron have loads in common- both being highly insecure, both desperate to prove themselves, both being the butts of the family’s jokes (honestly, I think they double down on Ron after Percy leaves), having their accomplishments belittled and forgotten etc. 

That’s why I have such a soft spot for Percy probably. I like to think he sees himself in Ron- and that’s why he reached out to him in OOTP. Like it said above, he’s very justified in worrying about Ron being friends with Harry- but he also sees Ron as the person who, like him, could get out from the shadow of the family and really do things. That kinship of being the two odd ones out in the family? Percy gets it on a deep level and wants to help his brother.

The thing is, when it comes to his falling out with the family- it’s so understandable- it was a breaking point for Percy that had little to do with the Ministry, and more to do with him bitter about another of his accomplishments being belittled- and the bitterness at how he’s trying to get out from his family’s shadow, feels he has, and then the triumph of it is snatched away again. 

Percy, besides being a fussbudget, is different from Ron in that he has more pride and ego when it comes to how he’s treated. Ron is more able to swallow it down and stick by people to be of service. Ron absolutely can’t handle his family disliking him and goes out of his way to just keep his head down most of the time- vs Percy is totally fine with drawing a line and being disliked in order for his needs to be met. He needs quiet to get something done? He tells off everyone including his older brothers! He’s proud of something he’s done? He boasts about it. He’s angry at his dad? He yells about it and storms out. 

Now, Percy isn’t the best at coping, obviously. He could learn some lessons from Ron on how to get on with other people and take life less seriously – and Ron in turn could learn to advocate for himself more and believe in his accomplishments and own them.

I like to think that when Percy comes back he’s learned those lessons- we see them for a moment- he learns how to put aside his pride and also make a joke. I completely agree that his level of self-loathing over their falling out is misplaced- and I hope that he’d recover from this level of self hate- and learn to reach a more adjusted place- as his family should as well in how they treat him.

The dynamics they had weren’t feasible for long-term- Percy was always going to break eventually from it all- and honestly I think Ron’s the same way- we finally saw him break from it all, only it was on the Horcrux hunt. 

These two boys have a ways to go to build up their tattered ideas of self-worth, learn how to healthily self-advocate. 

I think humans are meant to see the ocean.

fun fact, there may be an explanation for this in something called the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis!  There are some evolutionary biologists who think that at some point after the split from chimpanzees, our ancestors may have briefly become aquatic mammals but bailed out before becoming fully adapted to life in the water.  There are several quirks of human anatomy that may suggest this is the case:

Now, this is only a hypothesis, and it has opponents who argue that aquatic life isn’t the only explanation for any of these traits and there isn’t sufficient evidence in the fossil record, however the fossil record also doesn’t rule the possibility out.  So who knows, this may be the source of your longing for the ocean!

Fun Fact, thats, more or less, something that wealthy people in China and Japan did, they were called “musical floorboards.” Designed to squeak when stood upon. A person could make noise all the way down a corridor.

The residents and servants knew which floorboards made a sound and avoided them. But a burglar, or assassin didn’t. If you heard the creaking of floorboards, you knew danger was coming.

Even better, despite what movies may show, a lot of the old west was founded by Chinese immigrants, so there could have been carpenters around who knew how to make the musical floorboards!

They were also called Nightingale Floors, and looking up to make sure I had the right term, I found they were super clever! They were more than just ill-fit boards or whatever makes floors creak normally, they actually used little metal bars under the boards placed into small holes in the boards to cause the creak.

The best things on the internet are when someone makes a joke and then Miss Frizzle rolls up for an educational adventure.

Hop in kids we’re gonna assassinate the fuckin shogun

So in Minnesota there’s this cultural taboo about taking the last piece. If there’s a group and everyone orders pizza, typically one slice will not be eaten. At the office if someone brings donuts, the last donut will be left alone. Possibly cut in half. Then that half cut in half, but always leaving at least a little on the plate. The reason is it’s considered impolite because someone else might want it. To take the last piece is a desperate thing to do. There’s even an expression: “I wasn’t raised by wolves.” Anyway, here’s the best local facebook post going around right now. 

I saw this and thought to myself, thats so strange because thats a thing here in sweden as well, how two different places so far apart can have the same taboo.. and then I remembered something from history class

Humans are wild, huh?