Cat loves playing until he hears the automatic feeder

He’s got his thinking cat on

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke, the youngest MP in Aotearoa, starts a haka to protest the first vote on a bill reinterpreting the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi

so, someone called cersei a white feminist on one of my posts (not putting them on blast, don't seek them out), and i feel compelled to point out that contemporary comparisons like this don't always work well.

westeros is a pseudo medieval world with no history of a feminist movement and where all women are systemically barred from possessing political authority in their own right. power is derived from their male relations, specifically fathers and husbands. see, the way catelyn has to rally the men in her father's name when she tries to arrest tyrion in agot. in such a world, when characters like cersei and rhaenyra desire to gain the same social and legal benefits afforded to men, to denigrate their efforts right out of hand (which is often what labels such as 'girlboss' and 'white feminist' are accomplishing), is on some level, refusing to engage the premise.

i don't feel it's insightful to call these characters white feminists because their political reality is very different from ours. this doesn't even work as a criticism of the way they're written by the author, because the text certainly isn't neglecting racial and class issues in order to simply tell a story centred around the personal empowerment of two highly privileged women. they are both royalty who still enjoy power derived from an unjust feudal hierarchy, power which they have exercised to maintain their positions in said hierarchy. but at the same time, the desire for meaningful participation in the politics of the realm is not being condemned. nowhere is the implication that they shouldn't have tried to resist their socially ordained marginalisation at all. and we know the feudal patriarchy of westeros won't allow a woman to possess political power in her own right without the constant threat of hegemonic violence. this is the tragedy of both characters. westeros doesn't respect their authority and in order to command that respect they must go to war, but their support of patriarchal institutions and methods of violence eventually makes them tyrants. and the miserable end that rhaenyra meets (one that cersei will likely share) is critiquing both the hegemonic violence required to ascend and keep hold of the iron throne and the misogyny inherent in the system.

asoiaf is historical fantasy, the thing about stories set in the past is that you're being invited to consider a world with different models than ours. not everything is going to have a 1:1 contemporary equivalent, especially not in a fantasy series. and when readers try to force comparisons anyway, they ignore the actual social systems that influence and explain the motivations of these characters, and also often end up creating dishonest, far less sympathetic versions of them (see, alicent being seriously labelled a tradwife). and finally, these characters are narrative tools in service to the story. cersei and rhaenyra are not a moral lesson in the "right" or "wrong" way to resist gendered oppression, but simply one aspect of asoiaf's exploration of women navigating power in westeros. catelyn and alicent are another.

THE ONION OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE

ok, because i just saw a terrible take, i feel compelled to say that there is no "fic market" to "oversaturate" in fandom. good gravy.

i need everyone reading this post to remember that writing is not "content." writing is art. you don't look at a painting of an ocean and say "eh, it's overdone." you look at it and think its beautiful, because it is, and y'all better start treating writing the same fucking way before you lose your favorite authors for good.

Art is not something to be capitalized on. Stop treating it like it is.

ILU @impishtubist for these tags

everyone says join your local mutual aid groups and build community, but uh, what do you do if a lot of them seem to have dissolved and the other ones don't have consistent recurring meetings.

this is real, and it's a thing that a lot of people are going to run into in the fact of calls to "get involved," especially if they're people who haven't been deeply involved in their communities before. so here's what I can share:

some of the most successful organizing ive been a part of was a group in pittsburgh who for much of the year focused on providing snow shoveling to older folks in a neighborhood that was, undoubtedly, very conservative. the goal was neighbors helping neighbors and that did happen but another thing that happened was a lot of italian grandparents thinking fondly of anarchists as that nice young lady who comes by after blizzards

the problems are immense but not every single strategy to counter them has to be. it can just be small solutions sometimes too

sadrobots

Ship Sizes

Supercarrier: fandom flagship.  Everybody and their dog ships it.  The fandom is glutted with artwork and fic.  You cannot escape this ship.

Dreadnought: massively popular.  Nearly everybody ships it.  You can, with dedication, in theory, reach the end of the AO3 archive for the ship’s tag, but it’ll take a long time.

Cruiser: pretty popular ship.  Not everyone ships it, but everyone knows about it.  Has a good amount of fic/art, and probably multiple ask blogs.

Frigate: just plain popular.  Feels like it could use more fanworks.  New people to the fandom might not know about it, but they’ll stumble across it sooner rather than later.

Gunboat: bit of a rarepair.  It might have an ask blog or two.  A couple big name fans ship it.  Probably only takes a few weeks to get through the entire AO3 backlog, and one new fic gets added during that time.

Tugboat: rarepair.  Almost never seen except as a side pairing to a more popular ship.  You can usually get through everything on AO3 in a matter of days.  You’ve forgotten what it is to be picky about what you read.

Rowboat: less than a dozen people ship it.  You all know each other.  You exist in an endless cycle of the same five people desperately producing art and fic and one person who constantly contributes headcanons.

Canoe: you are one of maybe three people who ship it, and there’s a not-insignificant chance you’ve never encountered those other two hypothetical shippers.  You spend your days paddling furiously in hopes of keeping the ship afloat, dreaming of the day you upgrade to a rowboat so you can finally rest.

Submarine: Quite a few people ship it, but nobody wants to admit to shipping it. Will randomly appear and throw the other ships into confusion.

Pontoon: that random crossover ship with that one black dress character/trope/fandom everyone will ship with everything else. Has the potential to turn into a massive party until someone gets sick and everyone goes home.

Pedalo: That iconic bizarre crackship whose proponents claim they’re only into it ironically, but secretly they’re all dead serious.

Paging @amythe3lder for the pool noodle definition.

Barge: Not quite seaworthy, but buoyant in both the literal and figurative senses. Someone is always merrily drunktweeting about it at 11pm on Saturday night and then wistfully sobertweeting about it 4 hours later from their kitchen floor. The kind of ship that generates more playlists than fic. Artfully covered in trash and dirty laundry.

Raft: There’s two-to-four people who Ship It Hard and a few others who grab onto the side for safety when there’s drama on their usual flagship.

Barrel: There’s orphaned fic of it. There’s unsigned art of it. There’s headcanon asks on anon. Someone must ship it, but no one knows why or who they are. Your friend got a glimpse once before they ducked back down.

Pool Noodle: It’s just you, kicking your feet. You named the ship and wrote it on your noodle with a big sharpie. You tell people about it and are met with confused blinking. Most of the fics in the tag were either written by you or for you. You are caught between wanting to shout about how lovely life is on this floating scrap of whimsy and fearing that your noodle can’t bear much weight. Or worse, that someone will come over and dunk you, take your noodle and fwhap you on the head with it. 

This is a brilliant guide 😆

Ever Given: the fandom Supercarrier is, unfortunately, your NOTP, and it is impossible to find art/fic/meta of your preferred ship without being impeded by the Ever Given’s presence.

trump dies of congestive heart failure before being sworn in charge to like cast to reblog

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

So there's something I want to say re: intentionally withholding your vote, and I want to do it without coming across as condescending or dismissive.

I've worked as a field organizer in two campaigns, 2010 and 2012, and my job was to help turnout the vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Technology may have changed, but people are still knocking on doors for specific voters the way they were 12 years ago.

If you say you're not voting/voting 3rd party, the campaign volunteer is supposed to mark that and move on. Their job, in the final month of the election, is to make sure the campaign's supporters have all the information and resources they need to cast a vote.

They aren't collecting data on why you're withholding your vote. They aren't submitting opinion polling results to the campaign. Something like 155 million people voted in the 2020 election, and if you say you're not voting, the campaign is not going to waste a volunteer's time and morale begging you to vote when there are literally millions of other voters to turn out.

Let me repeat that: The campaign does not track why you're not voting. They simply note your vote is not a priority for turnout and move on.

I say this because I see a lot of promotion of non-voting like that's a boycott, when the function is not the same. A boycott is a coordinated mass refusal to engage with an institution—which sounds similar if you see a vote as a good or service to withhold. Unfortunately, it's not.

A vote is a choice you're making as part of a community hiring committee. Your abstention doesn't prevent someone from being hired. It just lowers the threshold for the worst candidate to succeed.

All this to say: In my direct experience as an organizer, abstaining from the vote sends a message. That message is not "You need to try harder to win my vote." It's "Don't waste time on me."