Nocturnal Sonnata

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

I noticed that there was a bigger egg under one of the broody chickens, when I checked. Of course I noticed, it was twice the size of the others. But I have geese. I figured it was a goose egg she’d found and stolen. It was about the right size, and I didn’t take it out to check the colour because that particular chicken gets very protective of her eggs. I’ve already got a scar on one hand from trying to get eggs away from her. I didn’t want a matched set.

That was a decision I regretted the moment I went out to feed the chickens and found a little blue-and-silver dragonet’s head poking out from under a very confused-looking chicken. The poor thing kept shifting around and looking under herself in a bewildered way, like she didn’t know what to do next. This particular chicken is a good mother, and she’s raised clutches of ducks and geese without any trouble – she’s even resigned to some of her children swimming – but this was too much. She didn’t object when I carefully reached in and fished out the little dragon.

It was so tiny, then. It fitted in my hand, with its little head peeking out one side and its tail looping around my wrist. Cute, too, with its big eyes and little snout turned up towards me.

That was when I made my second mistake. I decided to feed it before releasing it. Dragons are innately wild creatures, everyone knows that. They can’t be tamed. People have tried. The eggs are abandoned as soon as they are laid, and the dragonets hatch able to hunt, so they don’t even bond with their mothers. So just feeding it a little shouldn’t have been a big deal. It should have gobbled the meat and fled as soon as I loosened my grip on it and it saw the open sky.

It didn’t. As soon as I’d fed it, it fluttered up to a sunny window ledge and went to sleep. I went about my work, figuring that it’d leave in its own time.

By noon, it was sitting on my boot, squeaking pathetically. I wondered if maybe it was confused by the farmyard – they usually hatch in mountains, if the stories are right – so I took it back to the farmhouse with me and fed it again when I ate, then took some time away from the fences I should have been mending to walk it up to the hills. I found it some nice rocks, with plenty of lizards and beetles and suitable prey for something that size. It pounced on a beetle almost as soon as I put it down, and when I left it was crunching happily.

I hadn’t walked a quarter of the way back before something hit the back of my boot. The little dragon was holding on with all four claws, and when I looked down it squeaked pathetically. If possible, its eyes got even rounder.

Listen, you don’t make it as a farmer if you just let orphaned baby animals die. We hand-raise calves and lambs and ponies, set chickens to sit on abandoned eggs, or put them under the kitchen stove or by a fireplace. You don’t make a success of farming if you don’t value every animal. A good shepherd will spend all night looking for one lost sheep. So despite what was said later, it wasn’t just sentiment that made me sigh and pick up the little thing and carry it back to the farm.  I am a good farmer. I don’t let orphaned babies die just because they’re a little work.

Aries: Après moi, le deluge - “after me, the flood”, something thought to have been said to Louis XV by his mistress Madame de Pompadour, implying an indifference to what (damage) happens after you are gone, a disregard for the consequences of your life. 

Taurus: Plus ca change… (plus c'est la même chose) - “the more things change, the more they remain the same”, a way to express disillusion or defeat in regards to how things always stay the same at their core, even though things change. 

Gemini: Savoir-faire - “know (what to) do”, the quality of being capable to handle any situation with grace, having mastered adaptability and ingenuity. 

Cancer: Enfant terrible  - “unruly child”, refers to someone (often a child or one of childish spirit) who, by being overly candid and untimely in behavior, embarrasses and shocks their surroundings. 

Leo: Roi fainéant - “do-nothing king”, an expression for a king with no (real) power, a play-king left to his riches, vanities and dissipations. 

Virgo: Le mot juste - “the exact word”, coined by Flaubert, searching for le mot juste is the tireless and hopeless effort in finding the perfect word to describe something, to fix the unfixable.

Libra: Cherchez la femme - “look for/seek the woman”, a presumption that if a man is acting strangely, out of character, or inexplicably—there’s always a woman lying behind it. 

Scorpio: L’appel du vide - “the call of the void”, being plagued by intrusive thoughts of destructive nature, feeling momentarily drawn to demise.

Sagittarius: Esprit d’escalier - “staircase wit”, the frustrating phenomenon of coming up with the perfect observation or comeback after the opportunity to use it has passed.

Capricorn: Nostalgie de la boue  - “mud nostalgia”, a desire or yearning for what is depraved, degrading or crude. 

Aquarius:  Poète maudit - “doomed poet”, used to describe the fate of the great poet, who is doomed to obscurity and to live as an outcast to, or against the world.  

“Holy water cannot help you now

A thousand armies couldn't keep me out
I don't want your money
I don't want your crown
See, I've come to burn your kingdom down”

Cultural appropriation

don’t incorporate the practices of closed cultures into your craft - it’s not your place to do so; this includes “smudging,” the use of dream catchers when obtained from non-natives, engaging in practices that are exclusive to poc if you are not a poc, etc.

Stereotyping 

don’t buy into the idea that all witches are evil, female, worship the devil, are wiccan, etc.

on the same note, if you follow the wiccan ideology of the rule of three and “harm none” and all that jazz, don’t assume that everyone follows your path because, and this might be shocking to you, we don’t

Over-harvesting

refrain from using herbs that are endangered, threatened, or even sacred to some cultures, such as white sage or palo santo

there is always an alternative and an endless amount of herbs you can use in place of the popular ones you see floating around the internet

Purposely posting harmful information

before you freak out, hear me out: there is so much awful information out there, and part of me wants to believe that these people just don’t know any better but the other part of me knows that they legit believe in things like essential oils as a cure, and that vaccinations and healthcare providers are evil

don’t be that person

know that science and witchcraft can exist in the same world, and that you should not ignore medical advice in lieu of a magickal cure

Content theft 

even if you’re saving things for your own use at a later date, tumblr has this nifty feature in which you can “reblog” things rather than save them and reupload them yourself - don’t repost, reblog 

also please don’t screenshot popular posts and reupload them to places like instagram, pinterest, or facebook; rather, reblog our posts or find our instagram accounts to follow and support the original creators

it may seem utterly ridiculous, but believe it or not, content authors like myself put a ton of work into the stuff we post here - don’t think that because you reuploaded our work elsewhere that you’re “doing us a favor” and “helping to spread information” because you’re absolutely not

if you see content theft, please tell OP so they can report it and help put an end to the seemingly never ending content theft in this community

Gatekeeping

know that your path will likely differ from the next witch, and understand that there’s a difference between belittling someone for their beliefs and having a mature, educated discussion about it

the same goes for correcting actual misinformation or information that can be deemed harmful

it’s 100% okay to have different beliefs than what you see presented here on tumblr, just don’t be a dick about it

don’t like emoji spells? don’t use them. not a wiccan? who cares. perform curses? great!

Someone sick with bubonic plague: doctor please I'm--

Someone sick with bubonic plague: doctor....please ....