ain't dead yet

OK

final one

for all the marbles,

this one doesn't have an illustration bc i think it was just a kids novel but i haven't been able to find ANYTHING about it on my occasional internet queries:

kids is staying with his (grandmother?) in the woods and she warns him not to look a fox in the eyes bc they're tricksy and will swap places with you. obviously that's the first thing the little boy does and gets body snatched by a fox who uhhhh proceeds to pig out with his new little boy human hands and the boy has to trick the fox into looking him in the eyes again to switch back...

i cannot express how much these are from memory, that's how internalized these artists and writers have become, they're a part of me now

The second one is likely Stellaluna.

Something I notice is, when men discuss the manosphere, they either centre the reason boys fall down that pipeline on some inner weakness or defectiveness of the boy, ie. "they're just autistic weirdos who want rules for women because they can't get their dick wet," or they centre the reason on women, "feminism had made women too woke, mean and impossible to socialise with."

What I noticed while working is that every single little Tate goblin I had to work with had conservative parents, and I have never once seen that aspect of all this discussed. Boys will reflect the social norms they are raised in within their household. The biggest preventative for manosphere bullshit I saw in the boys I worked with was a dad who isn't a fuckwit and a household that isn't LARPing the 1960s.

Think about it. Gods are fueled in part by mortal belief and prayer so Gods need to cultivate widespread mortal civilizations to maximize their following and thus their power. But the longer a mortal civilization goes on and the more advanced it gets the greater the possibility that one or more mortals will catch a case of the Old Hubris Shudders and take a swing at usurping the Gods, dethroning the Gods, banishing the Gods and cutting off their access to the Prime Material, or otherwise table flipping the divine balance of power.

If you're a divine being that's bad, so what do you do? You employ the good old Tower of Babble strat. Frequently.

Mortal societies getting the magic-tech version industrialized and starting to question the infallibility of their agricultural pastroalist deities? Wide spread famine will fix that right up. Elves building a continent spanning empire and the Emperor starting to crave immortality and worship like a god? Smiting the Emperor is a Standard Action and toppling his Empire with a rain of jaguars is a Bonus Action. A particularly rowdy group of wizards start planning to raise their city into the heavens where they might potentially be a threat? Turning all the wizards into undead and punting the tower into the Underdark for good measure nips that problem right in the bud AND creates a fun dungeon location for some mid level adventurers in a few centuries.

also, for the unaware: mclaughlin v. florida was a 1964 supreme court case that struck down a florida anti-miscegenation law that criminalized cohabitation (and thus, as implied, sex) between white people and people of color of opposite genders. anti-miscegenation laws made marriage and sexual relationships between white people and people of color, most often specifically black people, a FELONY in several states in the united states up until the 1950s and 1960s. though it was already struck down by the supreme court, the state of alabama didn't repeal their law until 2000! there were THREE ATTEMPTS at codifying anti-miscegenation into the us constitution!

like yes, the issue here is partially straight white people's ignorance on the united states's history of homophobic policy, but it's also really important to recognize that arguably the majority of the issue here is straight white people's ignorance of the united states's history of codifying eugenics and antiblack racism.

thoughts without Blorbo: oh my god I was so cringe in seventh grade why did I do that