welcome to my ✨void of hyperfixations✨

decolonizepalestine, a website run by palestinians debunking myths about israeli occupation and answering faq’s

article on zionism and colonialism from the perspective of their victims

masterlist of resources including books, articles, videos, documentaries, and links for general research

aljazeera, one of the most reliable news sources for getting information and updates about palestine

associated press article about sheikh jarrah

active master doc of resources including books, articles, videos, documentaries, live updates, and how to help

the official website of the bds movement

instagram users palestine, letstalkpalestine, subhi.taha, younesbendjima, mohammedelkurd are all providing live updates from palestine

It is not a neutral “conflict”. Palestinians don’t have:

an army

police officers littered around the streets fighting off attacking settlers

$3.8B funding from the US

bomb shelters

homes (hello they’re being evicted and bombed?)

immediate access to medical care (settlers are blocking ambulances and throwing grenades)

citizen acknowledgement from the government that supposedly wants to help them

means of defending themselves

the right to properly mourn (a funeral was recently attacked by settlers)

justice

Anyone who chooses to claim neutrality is choosing to claim the side of genocide. Neutral = complicit. The number of Palestinian deaths remains staggering and I promise, the occupying state’s numbers are nothing compared to it. Thousands more deaths and fatalities have occurred to the Palestinian people. When the death toll defers by roughly 9,000, I think it’s safe to say that the situation isn’t neutral.*

I repeat, if you are neutral, you side with genocide.

*x

As a bonus:

Last updated April 9, 2021.

World-Building

4 Tips for Writing Magic

Creating a Culture

Totalitarian Governments

Creating a Distinct World

Creating (Fictional) Medicine

Describing New Settings

Writing a War

Writing a War with Superheroes / Magic / Fantasy

70 Questions for World-Building

Creating Superstitions

49 Questions for Creating a Religion

The Tie Between Characters and World-Building

34 Questions for Creating a Government

36 Questions for Music in World-Building

Creating a New Species

42 Questions for Creating an Education System

Characters

Developing Character Appearance

Developing Character Personality

Multilingual Characters

Creating a Wardrobe

How to Name Your Characters

Your Characters vs. Already-Established Characters

Effective Point-of-View Character

Writing an Impactful Death

Writing with Archetypes

Designing Your Characters

Mute Characters

Thinning Your Cast

Not Enough Characters?

84 Questions for Developing Plot and Character Roles

Sexuality without a Relationship

Consistent Personalities

Skills and Knowledge

Creating Conflict

Character Arcs

Sympathetic Characters

Name vs. Pronouns and When to Use Them

Creating Character Voice

Characters Who Are Learning Another Language

Character Fears

Finding Motivations

Creating Character Flaws

Emotionless Characters

Relationships

Dynamic Relationships

Sibling Relationships

Believable Romance

Characters Who Don’t Know How to Relationship

Complementary Character Traits

Writing a Slow-Burn Romance

Characters Who Fall Out of Love

Groups of Characters

Making Compatible Characters

Emotions

Frustration

Grief

Fear

Planning & Plotting

Planning a Series

Writing an Outline

Tips for Writing Subplots

Non-Point-of-View Romantic Subplots

Avoiding Generic Plots

Planning and Pace

Editing & Prose

Writing with Emotion

Controlling Pace with Detail

Steps of the Editing Phase

Descriptions in Context

Imagery

Dialogue

Showing vs. Telling

What is passive voice?

Reworking Moments of Exposition

Adverbs

When to Cut Your Content

Avoiding Cliches in Your Story

The Importance of Vocabulary

Writing Beginning Paragraphs

Motivation

How to Balance Multiple Projects

How to Fall Back in Love with Your Story

Writing Every Day?

Sticking with Your Story

Getting (Back) Into the Writing Habit

Setting Realistic Goals

Shiny New Idea Syndrome

Positive Writing Mindset

Staying Motivated on Your Projects

Getting in “The Zone”

Keeping Writing Logs

Avoiding Burnout

Breaking Out of Writer’s Block

Scenes

Quick Decisions

Travel Scenes

Breakdown in the Shower

General Writing & Miscellaneous

The Joys of the First Draft

Injuries

Creating Suspense

Writing Poison

Prophecies

A Word to Young Writers

Making a Moodboard

Consuming with the Producer Mindset

For First-Time Writers

Building Your Writing Skill

Advice for Student Writers

How to Do Research

How to Maximize Your Writing Time

How to Make Your Book Look Like a Book

On Experimenting in Writing

When to Use Multiple Points of View

Building Theme

Becoming a Beta Reader

Background Music While Writing

Why Committing to a Project Can Be Stressful

Warm-Ups for Writers

Determining Your Story’s Genre

Why do we get stressed when we don’t write?

Writing Short Stories

I went down a rabbit hole today and found out that early sexologist Havelock Ellis, who wrote one of the first books arguing for gay rights, was ace. (The book was Sexual Inversion, 1896.)

So when we say “queer is a slur” was started by terfs, maybe use some critical thinking and try to understand what we mean. That is, if you actually care about queer people and the damage terfs do, rather that just screaming “queer is a slur!” and ignoring the actual point.

Terfs did not like that queer was reclaimed. End of. This is a fact. Queer was too broad, too accepting, and embraced all the people they wanted gone. And I know y'all exclusionists feel the same but get pissed when we point it out so you deny it, but sit down and listen for a minute.

Queer was the preferred term for poc. For bisexuals. For trans people. For people with multiple identities. It neatly encapsulated everything, and was a friendly community to those who felt thrown under the bus by mainstream LGBT activism. It was a political and social statement, “you treated my like I was different and weird, and guess what? I am and that’s something to be proud of.”

So the response? “You can’t use that word. Its bad. Its a slur.”

And at the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes. Everyone knew why they didn’t like the word and brushed that off. It was fine.

So they started more subtly. “Just so you know this word is very harmful and is a slur so be careful how you use it :))) in case you didn’t know :)))) its a slur :))) friendly reminder :))) for the sake of other people of course :))))” type shit on every post involving the word, including and especially posts simply mentioning self identification.

Always worded in friendly, concerned ways, like the derailment was meant to be nice and considerate, and not about normalizing their rhetoric.

And what happened because of that was a younger generation of community kids growing up with these statements being thrown at them and absorbed on every. Single. Post. That. Mentionioned. Queer.

The result? That same generation of kids cutting it all short, removing the meant-to-be-palatable niceness, to just say “queer is a slur.”

Exactly how it was originally intended. “Queer is a slur.” People drop on posts where young queer people talk about it being a self identifier that actually fits them. “Its a slur,” they comment, with nothing else, on posts they clearly didn’t read past that word, written by people twice their age who had reclaimed it before they were even born.

Its nasty. Its disgusting. It’s plain old bigotry, whether the people saying know it or not. It is a terf tactic, plain and simple.

And no one wants to deny that it is indeed used as a slur (right along with all the rest of our identities.) No one wants to be insensitive and force it on people who haven’t reclaimed it.

But invading queer people’s posts to spit “queer is a slur” is flat out queerphobic. You do the dirty work of terfs, of cis straight oppressors, by saying in one simple sentence: “its a dirty word, there is no pride in it, you haven’t/can’t reclaim(ed) it.”

And regardless of your actual intentions, when you do this, that is EXACTLY what you are communicating and doing.

queer studies

 is a thing. Queer Theory is a thing. If I search my Uni’s library for ‘queer’ I get 138,481 results. Here are some of them: 

Queer in Europe : contemporary case studies / edited by Lisa Downing and Robert Gillett.

Queer Phenomenology, Sexual Orientation, and Health Care Spaces: Learning From the Narratives of Queer Women and Nurses in Primary Health Care, / Cressida Heyes, Megan Dean, Lisa Goldberg.

Playing With Time: Gay Intergenerational Performance Work and the Productive Possibilities of Queer Temporalities / Stephen Farrier

Postcolonial and queer theories : intersections and essays / edited by John C. Hawley.

Queer Dickens : erotics, families, masculinities / Holly Furneaux.

Showing Your Pride: A National Survey of Queer Student Centres in Canadian Colleges and Universities / John Ecker, Jennifer Rae, Amandeep Bassi

Mad for Foucault : rethinking the foundations of queer theory / Lynne Huffer.

Hellenic Polytheism can be a bit daunting to start off - and it’s hard to know where to find the right information or what to research! Hopefully this post will help to give you a starting point - but please don’t base all your information off of one person! NOTE: I may link posts with conflicting information/methods. I leave it to you to decide what feels right and fits for you!

Websites, book lists and PDFs:

Theoi.com

Library Genesis

Hellenism resources

PDFs of myths

HP online accurate resources

Classics, mythology and modern worship

HP book list

Accurate resources

Book recommendations and online resources

Bibliography of Black-Centered Resources for Ancient Mediterranean Studies

The types of HP:

Recon vs. Revivalism

The basics of practicing HP:

Making libations

Introduction to epithets

Veiling basics + a veiling primer + basic hair binding and veiling + hellenic hairstyles in religious rites

How to write a prayer

Daily prayer journal

How to pray, praise and worship the Theoi

Homeric hymns - helpful for writing devotionals, hymns, etc. (external site)

Basic Hellenic supplies

Oaths

Sacred places

Offerings (and whether or not to eat them)

Hellenic khthonic ritual

How to honor Ouranic and Chthonic gods

Hellenic Calendars and when to worship deities:

The days of the month

Devotions for the last day of the month

A Hellenismos calendar 

Hellenion.org calendar (external site)

Hellenic festival year (external site)

About the Hellenic calendar of festivals

Pronunciation and terminology:

Hellenic pronunciation for the Theoi + Hellenic pronunciation pt. 2 + article

Khernips + Khernips pt. 2 + pt. 3

Miasma, khernips and katharmosis

On Lyma

Hellenic terminology (external site)

Finding / Information on deities:

Sacred animals of the gods 

Theoi.com (my go-to)

Household gods

The Nymphai

Other resources:

List of devotees on tumblr

Practical practicing of HP

This wonderful resource masterpost!

Masterpost of Hellenic polytheism and Roman polytheism resources

Introduction to Ancient Greek History - open Yale course

Note: Some areas are certainly lacking in the information department, please add resources if you have them! I’ve included all I could find as of mid 2020.

I decided to go through the followers of the LGB Alliance on twitter and block all of them, and I noticed a few trends in their bios and I thought I’d make a list of the ones that I (as a person who isn’t trans nor part of the LGBTQ+ community) saw as sus. Please feel free to add to this list!

radfem

radical feminist

gender critical / gc

sex not gender

any support of jk r*wling or maya / # thisisnotadrill

gender free

gender atheist

mentions of “trans ideology”

mentions of “trans dogma”

biology is real

sex is real

adult human female/male

“homosexual female/male”

mentions of “sex segregation”

wumben / wimpund / woomud / wombyn (reference to a popular terf post)

wombyn-born-wombyn

mentions of female/male biology in their name, bio or profile picture

mentions of not being “anti-trans” (always be suspicious of those who defend against something they have not been accused of)

“against redefining womanhood/manhood”

“not cis” / sis not cis

“cisters” 

identifying themselves with chromosomes “xx / xy”

LGB / L/G without the T / drop the T

“woman/man isn’t a state of mind” / “woman/man isn’t a trend” 

“trans is misogyny”

terf is a slur

TIF / TIM (trans-identified female / trans-identified male)

Pro-woman / pro-female / pro-male

gender exclusionary

pro-reality 

anti-gender 

MERF (male exclusionary radical feminist)

protect women’s/men’s spaces

female/lesbian/male/gay errasure

These are ones that on their own I don’t think would equal a transphobe but in the context of other things in their bio/name/posts can help solidify whether or not they’re transphobic or generally bigoted.

mentions of “trans activists”

“critical of gender stereotypes”

2+2=4 (dog whistle for “biology is real” bullcrap)

rb/rt ≠ endorsement (used as a scapegoat to continue spreading bigotry)

“queer is a slur” (can be used to exclude trans people from gay spaces)

lesbophobia 

“gay not queer” / “lesbian not queer”

mentions of “identity politics”

mentions of “women hate”

mocking of pronouns ( fuck/off, adult/human/female, ob/vi/ous, it/its)

mentions of thought crimes / “my thoughts are not illegal” (scapegoat for spreading bigotry)

I will say, transphobes and terfs can be anyone.

Terf does not equal lesbian, or even gay

Terf does not equal cis women, or even women

Terf does not equal white, anyone can be transphobic.

Just because a person looks progressive on the outside does not mean they really are, LGBTQ can just mean “gay and lesbian” to some people. Transphobes might not post their own bigotry, but look at who they follow and who follows them, or if they have posts shaming transphobes/supporting trans people.

Some of these may seem trivial, but that is how people get roped into bigoted ideologies, if you can agree with the phrase “biology is real” without knowing the transphobic undertones or intentions behind that phrase, then it’s a slippery slope from there. We have to help the trans community fight against transphobes, no matter what minority group they’re from, by learning about dog whistles and shunning people who spew them from our circles.

Me too.

So here's what I did.

If you like:

Literary inspired webseries (I'm looking at you, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries stans, it's been a while)

Classic literature, in general.

Gay classic literature, as in homoeroticism (me too again)

Strong Female Characters who Deserve Better.

Theatre, Shakespeare, and stuff.

Dark Academia, ultimately.

Well, I have good news for you :)

Sibyl Vane: the miniseries.

I have a YouTube channel in which I've been uploading some short funny (I hope) videos about Mary Shelley (because playing her is so much fun, you can't even imagine), Agnes Grey, and, now, Sibyl Vane.

These series are about, well, Sibyl Vane, but in the modern word.

Yes, I know, but hear me out.

There will be a total of 5 videos, 3-5 minutes each, with Sibyl (aka me) talking in first person about her life.

☆The first one is an introduction with some backstory

☆The second one is about how desperate she is to find love

(also did I mention I made her canonically bi?)

☆The third one starts when she's been dating Dorian for a week

☆The fourth one is right before her first performance since she is in love

(If you know you know)

☆ The fifth one is the finale

Interested? So far?

Well here's the link to the premiere!

If you like it, give it thumbs up, subscribe, watch the rest of the videos, tell your friends and enemies, you know!