You know that another person is queer - that they use the word queer for themselves - and that is the only thing you know about them. On the most basic level, would you trust them to not be immediately hostile or hurtful to you?
#no#I'd really like to#but between the whole factionalism thing#and hating on bi people or ace people or trans guys depending on what's fashionable#and the fact queer circles these days seem to mandate a specific brand of 'progressive' politics#that just happens to include fucking antisemitism#the answer is no and is sadly likely to remain no
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the draw of arranged marriage AUs to me is really the way the dubcon of it all binds them together. neither of them have a choice in being here, something else is foisting this upon them whether thatās their parents or the political situation around them or expectation or something else, but the point is that they donāt get that one choice. so they have to make a choice somewhere else, that now that theyāre here, theyāre going to make it work. theyāre each otherās only allies, in this cage built around them. they may have been coerced into swearing to stand by each other through anything, but they did swear.
Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings heās always like āwell we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said soā
Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"
Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.
And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.
whatās funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like āoh i canāt not fuck that.ā
Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.
The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; theyāre resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seemsā¦ demographically balanced? There certainly isnāt a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; thereās no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.
What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.
Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you donāt climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your fatherās loverās lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)
Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husbandās. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. Itās expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So sheās just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, theyāre all hers. Yes, thatās fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? Thatās really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her houseā¦ er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, thatās correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..
In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.
When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.
Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, theyāre all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Samās kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.
No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.
Since āpledgeā kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesnāt tell anyone that the formation of Thorinās Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Tookās Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his ābachelorā status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldnāt reasonably be denied by anybody.)
In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. Itās free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)
Gandalf never explained.
* see the post about the Old Tookās āenchanted diamond cufflinksā that obeyed the wearerās commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire
Only through Boromir while Boromir was alive! Pippinās familial claim through Boromir technically dissolved on Boromirās death, as Denethor hadnāt been privy to it, and those bonds rarely stretch to a stranger when the person in the middle has died before introducing them; although Pippin, who was well-brought-up, perfectly and politely rectified the problem at once by simply swearing himself as Denethorās pledge-son. but through his blood-cousinship to Frodo, who was older than Boromir, his status as the Took double-primarc (donāt ask) and the proximity-enhanced status-doubling effects of having a five-way cousin in Merry, Pippin was demonstrably higher status as a pledge-sibling and was also his own father-in-law and approved of himself. As such, he would have significantly raised Boromirās social status and marital prospects in the Shire.
Inheritance follows parent-child pledge as the primary consideration, with matrilineal descent as the secondary. Pippin would have been bewildered to gradually understand that Denethor held his two sons in such odd and different standing :-/ hobbits donāt recognise kingship so it wouldāve been very upsetting and disappointing to Pippin to understand how Denethor stood in position of sworn-father to a whole city of people without even being slightly fair to his younger hearth-son. Aragorn is demonstrably much better dad-material and therefore had Pippinās vote. Pippin, by virtue of being an excellent father-in-law to a spectacularly promising young son-in-law, also considered himself a better candidate for king of Gondor than Denethor, by outranking him in Dad Competence - but was too busy by the time he realized this to point this out .
Ironically, the events in which Pippin realized this made Faramir his own hearth-son - so Pippin won in the end and took a great interest in ceremonially approving of Eowyn. Gandalf never explained
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It's my goal right now to create a new mermaid design every day Mermay. I thought opening up requests would be a great way to learn about new and awesome fish! Then people asked if maybe I can do other sea creatures that aren't strictly fish?
Sure! I've done selkies and cetaceans, what if somebody wants an octopus? So I can handle that! I said any aquatic animal is fair game.
I have since been challenged with an array of strange and haunting creatures that technically count as aquatic!!! And I said I'd do them so, after the frog, a cherished supporter gave me a new task.
hallucigenia
Yeah I didn't know what that was either. It's a funky noodley spiky creature from the cambrian era and TECHNICALLY IT'S AN AQUATIC CREATURE SO OK.
Hallucigenia is called that due to the absolute silliness that went into its discovery and reconstruction. Scientists originally put it together upsidedown and backward, not knowing which part was for walking or waving around. So of course she proved a ridiculous challenge to adapt to mermay.
Iāll put the disclaimer on this, even though it shouldnāt have to be said: this is not a defense of AIPAC, the Israeli government, lobbying, political spending, or warfare. it is an explanation of blatant antisemitic dog whistles and conspiracies. yes, there is a difference between this and informed criticism, and yes, Jews are entitled to find this alarming. and yeah, itās also boring, and a tired, centuriesā old narrative. we recognize it.
FYI, these guys are endangered due to overhunting. They are still around due to a strong effort by Israeli and Jordanian ecologists to preserve them. Ibexes are protected in Israel (which is the only country taking population surveys), Oman, and Egypt. There's a group in KSA, but the Saudis aren't counting their numbers. There's not a lot in Yemen, but the ibex is still considered a national symbol. They're susceptible to poaching in most of the countries where they live.
This photo is likely in Israel, not Palestine, because ibexes live in the Negev desert, the southernmost part of Israel. They don't go west enough toward Gaza and they're not north enough to touch the West Bank. Of course, animals don't give a damn about borders and there's nothing that prevents them from going into the West Bank, but it's a markedly different climate from the Negev. (My understanding is that the West Bank was created to exclude the Negev specifically, but those borders were made by colonizers.) It's weird to attribute a photo in Israel to Palestine.
A Letter to the Minnesota DFL on Blackness, Belonging, and the Politics of Approval
Hey, Jumblr! Seeing anything familiar in this piece? (Bolding by me)
So that "no other minority" thing? Not true. Unfortunately, it shows that the problem is bigger and more widespread than is often assumed.
I have spent much of my adult life arguing with the Democratic Party.
I have questioned candidates. I have questioned policies. I have questioned priorities. I have sat in meetings, attended conventions, organized communities, and participated in countless conversations where disagreement was not only expected but necessary. Politics, after all, is not a religion. It is an ongoing argument about how we ought to live together.
Questioning the party is not new for me.
What is new is the growing realization that the questions themselves have become unwelcome.
That realization has been slow and, at times, painful. It did not arrive through a single election cycle, a single candidate, or a single controversy. It emerged through years of watching a political movement increasingly define itself through the language of inclusion while becoming less comfortable with disagreement. It emerged through countless conversations in which difficult questions were acknowledged but not answered. It emerged through the subtle but unmistakable feeling that belonging was no longer rooted in shared values, but in ideological compliance.
As a Black woman, that feeling is difficult to ignore because it carries echoes of a much older story.
Over the last several years, I have watched the Minnesota DFL increasingly define itself through the language of identity. Diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, belonging these words appear everywhere. They are repeated in speeches, campaign materials, conventions, and community meetings. Yet the more frequently I hear these words, the more I find myself wondering whether we have confused representation with liberation and symbolism with solidarity.
The contradiction became impossible for me to ignore as conversations unfolded around Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt. To be clear, this is not an argument against criticism. Public officials should be questioned. They should be challenged. Accountability is not oppression, and disagreement is not discrimination.
What troubled me was something else entirely.
What troubled me was watching people who proudly place Black Lives Matter signs in their yards, who speak passionately about protecting democracy, who insist that we must believe Black women, suddenly abandon those principles when confronted with a Black woman they disagreed with.
The issue at hand was the federal immigration enforcement surge that swept across the Twin Cities. People were angry. Fear was real. Communities were frightened. But what I could not understand was why so much of that anger became directed at Sheriff Witt, a county sheriff who neither created federal immigration policy nor controlled federal immigration enforcement.
Yet as I listened to accounts from those present, I heard story after story of people literally turning their backs as she spoke. Not debating her. Not questioning her. Not engaging her. Turning away from her.
There was something profoundly symbolic in that image. A Black woman standing before a crowd that regularly invokes the language of justice, inclusion, representation, and solidarity, only to be met with a gesture of rejection. And I found myself wondering what happens when our slogans collide with our actions. What does it mean to proclaim that Black lives matter, that Black women should be believed, and that democracy requires listening, only to dismiss the experiences of Black women when those experiences become uncomfortable?
And I found myself wondering what happened to all of the slogans.
Where were the lawn signs?
Where were the declarations that Black lives matter?
Where were the calls to believe Black women?
Where was the insistence that democracy depends upon listening, especially when we disagree?
Because democracy is not tested when we hear voices that affirm our existing beliefs. Democracy is tested when we encounter voices that challenge them.
What unsettled me most was not the treatment of Sheriff Witt alone. It was what followed.
What struck me was not disagreement. Disagreement would have required engagement. It would have required listening, asking questions, and taking seriously the experiences that were being shared. Reasonable people can witness the same event and come away with different conclusions. That is not what troubled me. What troubled me was the absence of any real effort to grapple with what Black women and Black elders in my community were trying to communicate.
In the days that followed, I listened as people shared their experiences of what they witnessed. I listened to Black women describe their discomfort. I listened to elders whose commitment to civil rights, coalition building, and community organizing stretches back decades reflect on what they had seen and why it troubled them. These were not people looking for an argument. They were not demanding agreement. They were asking a simple question: Can we talk honestly about what happened?
That is the question I cannot shake. Not because everyone must agree about what happened, but because so many people seemed unwilling to even examine why Black women and Black elders walked away with the same sense of unease. What I witnessed was not a debate. It was a refusal to engage. And I keep returning to the same unsettling thought: What does it mean to invite people to share their lived experiences if we have already decided which experiences are worthy of our attention?
What troubled me most was not just the treatment of one sheriff. It was the realization that many of the same political spaces that insist Black voices matter often appear uncomfortable when Black people exercise independent political judgment. Blackness is celebrated when it confirms the movementās assumptions. Blackness becomes suspect when it complicates them.
This is not a new phenomenon. Black Americans have spent generations navigating institutions that welcomed our participation while attempting to regulate our autonomy. Historically, this took obvious forms: legal exclusion, segregation, voter suppression, and discrimination. Today the mechanisms are more subtle, but the underlying question remains remarkably similar: Who gets to determine which Black voices are legitimate?
That question has been sitting heavily on my mind because I increasingly see a form of politics that claims to celebrate diversity while quietly narrowing the range of acceptable thought. The expectation is rarely stated outright. No one hands you a list of approved opinions. Yet the boundaries become clear enough. Certain conclusions are rewarded. Certain questions are discouraged. Certain forms of dissent are interpreted not as disagreement but as moral failure.
As a Black woman, I find that deeply unsettling.
I have spent much of my life watching other people project their expectations onto Black bodies. I have watched institutions tell us who we should be, what we should prioritize, and what forms of expression are acceptable. What I did not expect was to encounter a progressive version of the same instinct. Different language. Different intentions. The same impulse to determine which forms of Blackness deserve validation.
Increasingly, it feels as though support is conditional. Representation is conditional. Solidarity is conditional.
We are told Black lives matter, but I find myself wondering whether what is actually meant is that Black lives matter when they remain politically useful. Black voices matter when they affirm prevailing narratives. Black women matter when they arrive at approved conclusions. Once disagreement enters the picture, the celebration often fades.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Movements that speak passionately about dismantling systems of power can become remarkably uncomfortable when marginalized people exercise power in unexpected ways. Organizations that champion diversity often struggle with genuine diversity of thought. Communities that celebrate authenticity can become suspicious of anyone who refuses to perform the identity they have been assigned.
This realization has forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth. The political tradition I inherited taught me that coalition building requires humility. It requires accepting that people who share your values may disagree about solutions. It requires the ability to remain in relationship with those who challenge your assumptions. What I increasingly see instead is a politics of litmus tests a politics where belonging depends less on shared principles than on ideological conformity.
That is what grieves me.
Not that people disagree. Disagreement is healthy. Disagreement is necessary. What grieves me is the growing sense that many institutions no longer know how to hold disagreement without interpreting it as betrayal.
And so I find myself asking a question I never expected to ask of the Minnesota DFL: If your commitment to Black voices disappears the moment those voices challenge you, what exactly is it that you are committed to?
Because there is a difference between supporting Black people and supporting a particular performance of Blackness.
There is a difference between representation and agency.
There is a difference between inclusion and obedience.
The distance between those ideas may be the distance between the party I once knew and the party standing before me today.
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Sorry I started sobbing uncontrollably when you expressed the slightest concern for my lack of human connection, and casually mentioned you think I deserve better than a life of isolation and loneliness. Super weird. Not sure what was up with that lol. You still think Iām cool and mysterious and sexy, right?
Whenever I talk about anti-Israeli xenophobia, I inevitably get somebody come up and explain that theyādĀ likeĀ to not be xenophobic (although they donāt call it in that term, of course), but that itās those damn IsraelisĀ makingĀ them be xenophobic. And they always say it in this kind of, sense that Iām going to sympathise with them.
I donāt.
The reason I have no time for this excuse is because of the distinction between emotion and action.
What Israel has done to Gaza is horrific, and I would hope that regardless of your views on the conflict, we can all acknowledge that there are now many people living among what is an almost-destroyed country. The IDF has committed war crimes at a minimum, and Israelās current government (at the time of this post) is blatantly racist and anti-Palestinian. And I get that when we see those things, especially with social media where you now see children being blown up on your feed, that is going to give you negative feelings about Israel. And when you have negative feelings about a country, you very quickly end up having negative feelings about a countryās people.
ThatāsĀ normal.Ā It isĀ normalĀ to feel like this. It is normal because from the very start of our species, our brains had to group people into boxes in order to survive. This Group of people give you berries and help sharpen your hunting sticks and so they are Good; This Group of people chase you with their hunting sticks and steal your berries and so they are Bad. Placing friend or foe into simple boxes is how human beings made it through so many centuries.
Which is why whilst it is sometimes difficult to read, I do not blame Palestinian, Lebanese, etc people for fearing or hating Israelis. They are genuinely in fight or flight, life or death mode right now. Trusting the wrong Israeli could end with them getting attacked or killed. Mending the hatred and fear between all of these populations is going to take centuries, generations. That trauma will not go away easily.
Westerners watching this all on social media? No, Iām sorry, you do not get that excuse. You are not over there. You are not being bombed. You are not being killed. You are watching this on your TV, and you can turn off whenever you want. If you really wanted to, you could disassociate from the entire thing and never think about Israel again, by constructing your social media feeds and being careful about what news channels you watch. You have an immense amount of privilege in that if you are wading into this conflict, you are choosing to do so, and you are making the choice that you will be presented with death and destruction and suffering. You areĀ choosingĀ to interact with this.
And yeah, good. Itās good for people to witness this and to take an interest and to want to end suffering. But you doĀ notĀ get to hijack that suffering and act as though you seeing the destruction of Gaza on a screen is the same as actually being in it.
You hate Israelis? Fine. Now itās your responsibility to unlearn that. Because youĀ canĀ unlearn it, because you are not the one having your villages ransacked, or guns pointed at your head, or your home taken over by settlers. You are not directly in that horror and fear and fury.
And you need to take a step back, and start taking some responsibility for your emotions. If you hate Israelis, that isĀ yourĀ issue to solve. Israelis do not need to perform in the way you want in order for you to recognise their humanity.
You have the Internet. You have libraries. You have bookstores. Go look for the Israelis who protest against their government. Go look for the Israelis who try to help Palestinians. Go look for the Israelis who write nuanced, conflicted essays. Go look for the Israelis who create books and films in order to explore their reality via fiction. Go look for the Israelis who set up interfaith groups. Go look for the Israeli children who arenāt old enough to understand anything about whatās happening. Go look for the Israeli scientists who are creating incredible progress in medical science that can benefit everybody in the world. Go look for the Israeli engineers who help create the same technology you use to publicly deny their humanity. Go look for the Israeli musicians who have created beautiful music for the world to enjoy. Go look for the Israelis who were traumatised by Oct 7th, but still want to give peace a chance. Go look for the Israelis who want nothing more than to have a happy childhood, get a job, marry a nice spouse, raise their children, then retireājust like everybody else. Go look for the Israelis who areĀ just like you.
If hearing Hebrew frightens you, go listen to Hebrew until it doesnāt.
If you think all Israelis hate Palestinians, go talk to them until you find one who doesnāt.
If you think all Israelis are ugly, go Google Image them until you find one you find beautiful.
If you think all Israelis are bloodthirsty, go research it until you find one advocating for peace.
If you point the finger at Israelis, remember there are three more pointing straight back at you.
I donāt really care if the past couple of years has ācaused youā to dehumanise and hate an entire population of people. Your emotions are your responsibility to tackle. Dehumanisation isĀ yourĀ problem. Take some goddamn responsibility and sort yourselves out.
Hating an entire population is not a sign that population is flawed. Itās a sign that you are.
Also must be stressed that if you want to justify and excuse feelings of antisemitic bigotry and willingness to violence among Arabs because of Israeli actions you need to understand that many if not most Israelis have the exact same trauma from attacks by Arabs. Both sides have deep-seated traumas and valid grievances which must be negotiated for a just peace to be possible.
If you can excuse the crimes of Yahya Sinwar because of the intergenerational trauma of his family being dispossessed by Israelis then you need to understand that Itamar Ben-Gvir has the same trauma from his family being forced by the Arabs to flee Iraq. The vast majority of Israelis are descended from refugees who fled antisemitic violence from Christians and Muslims within living memory. It isn't just Palestinian Arabs who are traumatized by Israelis, both sides are acting out of trauma in a messy intergenerational conflict that was horribly mismanaged by the UN and Arab League in the 50s and for which millions are still paying the price to this day.
This, exactly. The framing of the conflict as just one side acting and the other side just passively receiving the violence is 1) absolute bullshit and 2) a massive barrier to actually improving the situation.
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