searching, but not very hard

thinking about the practices like beta'ing (please tell me, did it make sense, the way their bodies moved in space? how did it make you feel? did it touch your soul? were there any typos?); translations, illustrations, affectual comments: the ongoing reciprocity of affect and the labor that goes into that.

thinking about fanfics written to be gifted: combing through a friend's ao3/blog/etc to make sure you know exactly what kind of freak they are because you want to give them the ultimate pleasurable fantasy experience (happy birthday, here are some feels, i crafted them for you by hand). then posting it publicly as a tagged gift so everyone else can join in too. a present for all.

thinking about the history of slash fanfiction practices spanning the last 50+ years and the way female and queer fans clawed out spaces for that, not only within the heteronormative patriarchal culture at large but within fandom spaces:

het fanzines and later websites refusing to publish slash or, at best, doing stuff like publishing it with a whole page warning and on a differently colored paper

cishet women writing and drawing slash smut for each other and having to hide it from their husbands; their secret, erotically-charged lives shared only with other women

diy typing out and printing of slash zines, of a 100, 200 pages each, to avoid printer screening and tracking; having to start own printing shops or finding queer-run ones; the materiality of it all

mailing slash zines for free and in secret to avoid not only copyright but sodomy and obscenity laws, like the (still active) federal mail law that criminalized mailing pornography, whether images or text (and how, when the 1964 Supreme Court ruled it inapplicable to noncommercial letters between consensual adults, the precedent excluded homosexual letter exchange)

thinking about fanartist Virginia Lee Smith, who, in the 1980s, drew explicit af K/S smut for a dozen zines, and her interview in 2009 about donating her 200 zines collection, where she said, laughing, "The reason I handed this over is because I know that my poor kid, if I die, will be so embarrassed[...] I know he's gonna burn them. Lost forever. So, I have no idea how many k/s fanzines have been burned quietly for that reason." thinking about how she said she outgrew it when she stopped drawing; and yet she kept all 200 of them anyway.

thinking about the ephemerality of pleasure and the continuance of shame.

Dany had no wish to reduce King's Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father. (ACOK, Daenerys II)

“Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" (ASOS, Daenerys III)

What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? (ADWD, Daenerys IV)

She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself. (ADWD, Daenerys IX)

so when dany does finally reach westeros, her defining moment isn’t going to be some glorious ascent to the iron throne—it will be the choice to fight for the people of westeros in the long night, rather than using her dragons to assert her own claim to power. presumably she’s going to witness the cost of war on the people of king’s landing (“it’s too high, the price is too high”) after some accidental wildfire explosion, or after she’ll have to make some morally questionable choices at the urging of her advisors (probably tyrion, given that he makes no secret of wanting to see king’s landing burn). and at whose cost? the common people. the same people who she has made it her mission to protect from the beginning, back when she wielded power for the first time in her life. and as people have pointed out, there’s also the parallel between dany as the “breaker of chains” and the others essentially enslaving people in death.

dany’s ultimate choice of turning north to fight the others will remind her of who she has always been: a protector of those who cannot protect themselves, someone who refuses to play the “game of thrones” at the cost of the common people, choosing instead to uproot corrupt systems of power entirely. she’s going to remember that her dragons represents a choice—to enslave and colonize as her valyrian ancestors did, to conquer and wage war as the targaryens did, or to liberate and protect people as SHE has always done. dany is going to see through her own dream of the iron throne, the illusion of stability and belonging, of home and love. she’s going to ask herself, whose dream is this? mine or my brother’s? she’s going to realize that the iron throne is not the path to the house with the red door, and how dangerous it is to conflate them.

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE ON AUGUST 12TH ~(8PM IN CENTRAL EUROPE) !!!!

You boxhead, you wouldn't know. You are flat out counting past ten

I suppose that the Honourable Gentleman's hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness

He's wound up like a thousand-day clock! One half more turn and there'll be springs and sprockets all over the building. Mr Speaker, give him a valium

Oh, look, it's just Howard being Howard, isn't it, you know? The little desiccated coconut's under pressure and he's attacking anything he can get his hands on

The Opposition could not manage a tart shop

For John Howard to get to any high moral ground he would have to first climb out of the volcanic hole he's dug for himself over the last decade

And my personal favourite:

This Yoruba bust (or Ife Head) is dated to the 12th-14th centuries.

This misunderstanding also deeply, unfortunately, and inaccurately mischaracterizes traditional arts in African cultures as being “less developed” for being more stylized, as if they cannot figure out realism due to difficulty (lmao?), which simply is not the case.