Planet Amazonia

The AIDS epidemic was monstrous. Not only for the lack of cure, but for the easy excuse it made for 'good people' to rid themselves of those disgusting gays.

The national willingness to discard an entire generation of (at first) gay men and then any queer persons has done immeasurable damage to every single one of us who survived it. The horror stories you might have seen in tabloids or online memorials only scratch the surface. We were unpersoned. We were named dangerous simply by our existence, and our presence was a herald for death and disease.

Our joy was not in spite of this. Our mad parties, the tendency to live in the moment, the stereotypical 'cattiness' and sex-crazed outlooks that media showers us with us even now, these were survival techniques. We dance because we lived another day. We craved physical contact from a world that feared us even in the same room, or touching the same door handle, or gods forbid us holding your hand.

And it's happening again.

If you notice your queer elders seem a little agitated beyond their usual baseline with what's happening with their trans peers this time around it's because we all recognize it from the 70s, 80s, 90s.

Name it a disease. Imply it's contagious, made-up for attention, or masking the 'real' problem (it's always pedophilia, always), often in the same breath. Consistency doesn't matter, only fear and hatred.

Say trans folks aren't worth the same considerations that good, upstanding people are. Deny them the medical care that, were they not trans, they would otherwise qualify for. Gender affirming care. Hormone treatments. Comprehensive therapy. Acceptance.

(Hell, even those lucky enough to escape obvious open discrimination find it on the back end, with medical care suddenly not being covered after being prescribed. Ask me how I know.)

And it's not just the right-wingers. Ask your Democratic or NP rep, if you have one, their thoughts on transgender rights. Listen close. See if they actually say anything of substance.

And then when trans people start dying off in droves, vanishing to forced detransitioning, assault, murder, or worse, well, that's just proof there's something wrong, isn't it? Not with the system. With us.

happy new year -------------_--------------------

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

Pawpaws are a Michigan native fruit that looks like it should not be a Michigan native fruit.

I'm told that it has the consistency of avocado, but tastes like a combination of banana, pineapple, and mango, with and earthy aftertaste. They are EXTREMELY delicate fruits, such that they are not really shipped anywhere- to eat them you have to find someplace local that has trees, or have trees, yourself.

I've always wanted to try them, so, I bought a few saplings, and spent a couple hours tonight planting them. They won't fruit for another 5 years at least. Each hole dug, each rootball excavated from its pot, each circle of mulch around the base of them... that's hope. That's a promise to be here 5 years from now, to see them flower, to pull sweet fruit from the limbs and try it for the first time.

Compiled some basic information I know about drawing fat characters for beginners since I've been seeing more talk about absence of really basic traits in a lot of art lately.

I haven't seen people talking about this, but the pilot for The Ebony Witch dropped! the visuals are absolutely beautiful. it has the same magic as old disney (if disney was brave enough to give us a hot elf who is actually 50 cats in a trenchcoat)

Like for the majority it really is "oh i'm hungrier and moodier than usual"

If, before you get your period, you feel furiously angry, suicidal, irritated by every tiny thing to the point you want to murder someone, stuck in a black hole you'll never escape from. If you are experiencing extreme emotions for what seems like no good reason, especially if you get your period and those extreme emotions just go away. You're probably not just PMSing , you may have PMS's feral big sister PMDD and it's treatable.

1) Firstly, because it immediately deconstructs the “hero throws and breaks something in frustration” cliche (Sherlock throwing a glass slide in HoB, anyone?) it might even be seen as a parody of that cliche.

2) Secondly, because the dynamic is different between a man and a woman than it would be between two women or two men, the visual of a man smashing something in a temper in front of a woman can be taken as threatening or borderline abusive. Joan Watson immediately shows that she is not intimidated by Holmes’ behavior.

3) Lastly? One of the running themes of Elementary is the deconstruction of Sherlock Holmes as the solitary, antisocial genius, and his becoming a member of a community. Holmes’ gifts are given their due respect, but no one in Elementary plays the game of Because Sherlock Holmes is a Bloody Genius He Can Do Whatever He Wants So There. When Sherlock goes after Moriarty (“M”), Captain Gregson suspends him. When Sherlock doesn’t want to talk about his addiction, Alfredo says “You’ve got to get over yourself.” And when Sherlock behaves like a spoiled child, Joan tells him “Use your words.”