I finally got tired of the lack of consistent maps for Quel'Thalas, especially pre-3rd-war Quel'Thalas, so I put my graphic design skills to work. Because what good is having the skill if you don't use it for the most frivolous things that make you happy?? And now I have maps I can reference for all my fics 😈
And yes, anyone who read the most recent chapter of @qwrite's In Pursuit, these are the maps she referenced, and the provinces/marches.
Bonus map: Leylines that @qwrite helped with
(maps were made with brushes from mapeffects.co, they're fantastic and you should check them out)
Because @rachel3003 pointed out there was no Legend, I have now added one.
Region boundaries are the provinces/marches, which are my own invention and what sparked this whole map making thing. But for those who haven't read In Pursuit (what are you waiting for, go read it) by @qwrite, they are as follows:
The Provinces of Silvermoon (the northern/interior, more 'settled' regions) -
Silvermoon Province
Isle of Quel'Danas
Sunstrider Isle
Eastwood Province
Tranquil Isle
The Eversong Marches (the outer/southern, more wild & wooded regions) -
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Weird to me when pundits are like, "I'm so surprised that these powerful CEOs and institutions are capitulating to the fascism in advance" like, no? They are the fascism? Fuckin... Zuckster isn't "capitulating" to Trump. He helped make Trump. And he'll be there working to undermine our freedom once Trump is gone, too. Wild, acting like these oligarchs are just not fighting back hard enough. They signed on to this shit in advance, man.
If the straight girls in this scenario leave, gay men aren’t going to magically appear. The bar will just be empty, the bartenders will make less money, and if it keeps up like that for long enough, guess what bar won’t exist anymore? Yeah.
I’ve known queer people who became uncomfortable with going to certain gay bars because they got sexually harassed by straight women on a regular basis. The straight women would decide they wanted to go out for a fun night without being hit on and sexually harassed by straight men, which is fine, but then they went into gay spaces and did the same thing to the queer men there because they decided that since they’re gay and it’s not “real,” it doesn’t matter, and it’s perfectly okay to touch strangers, make sexual comments at them, and generally harass them. Meanwhile, my queer friends felt like their nights were ruined because they couldn’t just have a drink with their group and dance a little without being touched and approached by women who made creepy comments, didn’t respect their space, and wouldn’t leave them alone.
Most of them liked women. But they weren’t there for that. And the ones who genuinely wanted to find other men to flirt with didn’t feel like they could do so because the straight women wouldn’t stop gawking at them, staring, and treating the entire bar like a petting zoo. This happened multiple times in different states and bars.
So if you have a gay bars with a bunch of straight women and no gay men, chances are the gay are gone because the straight women drove them out.
I’ve brought straight female friends to gay bars before because I knew they could handle it respectfully, and we had no issues. But that’s different because they came with a queer friend/friends, and because they weren’t there with a whole group of other straight women who didn’t know how to act.
The issue is that if you’re a straight woman coming into a gay bar, you need to recognize that that is not your space. It’s not for you. You’re allowed to be there and no one is stopping you, but you are not who is being catered to and the other people there do not exist for your entertainment. You need to respect that it’s their space and you’re a guest, and treat them with respect. Don’t touch or comment on them in ways you wouldn’t want straight men touching or commenting on you. Leave people alone if they’re not interested, and don’t insert yourself into conversations you’re not a part of. Don’t touch strangers unless they explicitly ask you to. You’re going to see a lot of people acting gay, men flirting with men, people you think of as men wearing makeup and feminine or flamboyant clothing (not all of them are actually men), drag artists, visibly trans people, and, in some cases, male burlesque dancers, strippers, or workers/patrons doing sexy dances for the entertainment of men. Don’t bother attending if you aren’t capable of seeing all of that without gawking at all the overt queerness and making everyone else feel like they can’t safely express themselves or enjoy those things without you getting weird about it.
If you’re a woman in a queer space, there is a non-zero chance that another woman or someone you percieve as a woman will show up and try to flirt with you. There aren’t many lesbian bars, and sometimes, queer women who are friends with queer men or other gender diverse queer people will go to regular gay bars because that’s the space they have where they can go out and be queer. You can politely explain that you’re not interested, but you don’t get to be offended that a queer person in a queer space assumed you were queer and found you attractive.
I think a lot of straight women think they’re automatically friends with the gates and welcome in our spaces because they’re straight women with more or less progressive politics, and they’ve seen a lot of media that makes them feel like there’s automatic solidarity between them. But having that relationship to the queer community requires you to view them with respect, and not as an accessory or pure entertainment.
I have several straight friends who are so welcome in queer spaces that they may as well be queer. Two of my best friends are a husband and wife who regularly engage in and even plan and host events that spotlight queer performers and are attended by largely queer crowds; the husband likes to put on elaborate events with performers, ans many of the performers end up being drag and burlesque artists simply because he makes decisions based purely on who is best suited to the event, and many people who apply are drag and burlesque artists of all genders. Sometimes, in connection with larger events, he helps organize drag shows that are hosted by trans members of the community.
No one I know has ever said anything about feeling like they’re intruding or making people uncomfortable by being present and visibly straight, and it’s because they’re respectful and appreciative of queer culture and identities. They genuinely respect the art of drag and burlesque performers that they actively choose to give platforms to. They explicitly ban behavior and costumes that may come across as hateful (e.g. nazi-inspired costumes and armbands will get you kocked out). They allow queer people to step in and be the face of events where appropriate. They’re there because they have queer friends that they love and because the community and subculture they’re a part of, while not explicitly a queer community (it’s just the local goth scene), is full of queer people, and engaging with that community means engaging with queer culture.
I don’t think straight people should be banned from queer spaces, but when you show up, you have to be respectful. And straight women who hold and attend Bachelorette parties at gay bars seldom are.
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Here's a source for the analysis, but it probably is not the source.
Workers’ share of US economic output has fallen to its lowest level since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data th
Some points of interest:
Corporate profits are soaring. After taxes, they now take 12.3 percent of national output, far above their postwar average of 7.3 percent.
Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019, Ip noted. Corporate profits over the same period have risen 50 percent.
The Economic Policy Institute calculates that since 1979 the productivity of American workers has grown 90 percent while the pay of the typical worker has grown 33 percent. Had wages tracked output, the average worker would earn $16.40 more an hour today.
The profits are concentrated among the largest corporations. Earnings at the 500 biggest US firms rose 28 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2021, and their profit margins reached 14.8 percent. The seven technology giants known as the “Magnificent 7”—Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Tesla—grew their profits 63 percent.
In the United States, the richest 1 percent of households hold 31.7 percent of all wealth. The bottom half hold barely 2.5 percent.
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I love that thing when people get a little bit tongue-tied and garble what they’re trying to say so they make a little “blegh” 👅 noise and start over. verbal reset button. hitting the top of the tv to unscramble the signal
Rewatching Truman Show for the first time in a long time, and the detail that’s stuck with me this time is the set design.
The characters drive modern cars and hock modern products, but it’s all presented with a veneer of 1950s wholesome applecheeked Americana. Truman’s life is presented as an escape for the audience from the drudgery of the modern day, and the aesthetic they’ve chosen for this is the post-war economic boom. This is the simple time, the movie says. This is the good time. Doesn’t the modern day suck? Let’s go back and see our friends from the days when life was good.
And it’s a lie. Truman’s life is a lie, and the image of white picket fenced suburbia they’ve presented is a lie. It’s an elaborate construction to recreate a false memory that’s comfortable for advertisers. The movie is a satire, but it’s also a very blatant statement against the nostalgia for a golden age which never existed. It’s a lie. It doesn’t exist.
I don’t know. I’m spitballing. I’m biased because I despise mid-20th century Americana and I naturally treat it with hostility, but it’s very gratifying to see a movie kind of agree with me.
Earlier in the summer, I went to Florida with my friend. We decided to visit a town nearish to where we were staying called Seaside, as we had heard it was a cute place. What I did not know at the time was that Seaside is the place where they filmed The Truman Show. It was a "master-planned community," constructed in the 80s to be the perfect beach town.
Seaside, FL
Seahaven
And yes, it really does look Like That. Not just in their tourist-agency photos, in real life it looks like that. Arguably the irl Seaside is even prettier than movie Seahaven, because the the office buildings where Truman works don't exist; the town is 100% cutesy homes and little shops.
Every single house is pastel with white trim and a white picket fence with the family's name on it in a handwritten font. The streets are paved with red bricks and lined with palmettos, and families bicycle past. The streets are clean, the lawns manicured, the sidewalks pristine.
Soon after we arrive my friend says as we walk, "God I wish I could live in a place like this. Imagine having the money to live in a place like this." I reply, "I don't actually know for me...it's gorgeous don't get me wrong, but there's no grime, you know? Where's the grime? I'd feel uncomfortable. It feels like there's not a dive bar for a hundred miles."
We reach the town center, which is a wide square lined with shops on one side, food trucks on the other. We have a lovely time looking through the shops, though I start feeling kinda weird, and I'm not sure why. Probably the extreme cleanliness of the area is making me feel off-kilter. And the surreal feeling of walking through areas I recognize from The Truman Show only adds to the weirdness.
We go into a clothing store, and it's crowded with people who appear to have stepped out of a Land's End catalog. It sells boring tshirts, shorts, and sundresses in whites and blues, all needlessly expensive. Employees walk through, refolding already-pristine shirts. So perfect. "Anyone buying from here is so rich they can probably smell the poor on us," my friend jokes, "that's why they have so many employees refolding things, it's to fix anything we brush against." "Or even breathe on!" I add.
We continue on to the grocery store where, in the movie, Truman finds Marlon stocking the vending machine and first tells him he suspects his world is wrong. I buy some pasta salad there to eat for lunch (all the cafes are quite expensive), and we find a place to sit and eat. As my friend finishes up her food, I write a postcard to my sister, telling her about my trip overall and my day in Seaside, describing the town as 'vomit-inducingly picturesque.' (It has been weeks since my visit and she still has not received that postcard)
Lunch done, we decide to walk down to the beach and have a swim. And I realize something about the surreal feeling. "Weird question," I say to my friend, "have you seen any non-white people here? Am I imagining that?"
She pauses. "The lady cleaning the bathrooms?" she asks.
"No I mean vacationers. Guests, customers. Other than you, I haven't seen a single one who wasn't white."
"...No. I haven't either."
And now that we see it, we can't unsee it. It's a wealthy area, so I had been expecting it to be pretty white, but the fact that there is not a single nonwhite person who isn't working a service job feels so gross. It's as though the place is somehow still segregated, like we have stepped back in time, but not to the fun, fake, rock-n-roll-and-soda-parlor-nostalgia version of the fifties, but to the real racism-and-repression fifties.
It is so fucking weird and sinister. I feel I have stumbled into another realm. All these people giving us sideeye, riding around on their golf carts in their pristine $45 seaside-branded tshirts, taking pictures of the perfect houses all lined up in perfect rows. A whole town of Meryls wearing lulu lemon.
We walk on. It's hot, and a swim is exactly what we need. Surely they can't ruin the ocean. I myself am extremely excited to swim, because now that we've spent a few hours among the pompous populace, I want to piss in their perfect ocean more than anything in the world.
We walk along behind the beachfront bar patios that line the beach toward the access point, and the ocean looks so blue and inviting. Although the hedge growing between us and the dunes is strangely tall. "Huh," I think. "It's weird that they'd grow it like this, it blocks the view for everyone sitting on the patios."
We arrive at the boardwalk, and there is a man standing there. He says "Hold on! Do you two have a beach access pass?" I look at him in disbelief. It's a public beach, but the sign behind the man says you have to rent a beach chair to use the beach, and it's $35 per person. We glance at each other, turn wordlessly, and head back to town.
I seriously consider trying to sneak onto the beach somehow, because at this point I am very invested in the idea of pissing in their ocean, but I realize that with the tall hedge it would be nigh-impossible.
We went home after that.
So many reviews for Seaside on travel websites mention how they love to visit Seaside because they feel transported, they feel it reflects a "simpler time" or a "peaceful life." It's been weeks and I can't stop thinking about my experience. It really drove home how...complicit people can be in their own ignorance. A lot of people want to live in that perfect bubble, and especially if they have the money, they can maintain that barrier. It reminds me that part of the reason I often have trouble persuading these types of people is because they simply do not want to be persuaded. They're so proud to be the place where The Truman Show was filmed, but I rather doubt they really think about what it means that they live on a movie set, in a surreal dream.
Honestly visiting Seaside was a 10/10 unique experience. I would highly recommend it as a place to go for a couple hours if you're gonna be nearby and want to feel like you've been kidnapped into The Truman Show and/or your brain has been put in an easy bake oven. It's like a zoo for superrich WASPS. We had a really good time loudly making fun of how insane it all was, invading their little paradise with our riffraff energy. Treat it like an excursion into the jungle; you're gonna have to park a half mile away minimum, and bring all your food and water with you so you don't have to buy anything. You don't want to give them any money. They have enough.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, next time I go to the panhandle, I will be going to the nearest free public beach access to Seaside, and I will walk to the Seaside area of the beach, and I will piss in their ocean.
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This just in: Sally, the robot teacher's assistant, has been put on hold.
Sally the humanoid robot, the $57,590 pilot program at Salamanca High School in New York was officially paused in July 2026 following intense public backlash, privacy worries, and intervention from state education officials.
Public Backlash: Parents, local residents, and unionized teachers strongly opposed the android, arguing students need real human relationships rather than machines.
Manufacturer Ties: The robot was set to be built by Realbotix, drawing scrutiny due to its sibling company's connection to adult products.
State Intervention: New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa sent a letter to the Salamanca City Central School District halting the deployment over unresolved questions regarding data privacy and instructional roles.
