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random bitter aspiring authors on “writing advice” blogs: Don’t make your main characters super special mary sues. don’t make them better than other people or more interesting. your main characters should be boring average guys with the personalities of wood pulp

the Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh was objectively the best man ever. He was the hottest, sexiest, most gorgeous hunk of pure manly awesomeness that ever lived and he used a sword that weighed 120 pounds.

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No, actually, with attempts by governments and political groups to censor and control media, including fictional media, ramping up so much, I think it's extremely appropriate to say "ACAB includes fandom cops".

Why are you under the impression these things have no relation to each other? Governments aren't deciding to do this completely separate from their people, they're backed and supported by a sizeable amount of their people, because pro-censorship and media control ideals are ramping up across populations.

And guess who that includes. It's not a coincidence that the rise in "antidom" in fandom spaces happened at the same time as the rise in support for censorship, book bannings, media control. etc happening offline "in the real world". Although this mindset of "how dare you say cop" was already moot considering the real cases of cops arresting and/or confiscating people's property over pieces of fiction and all the places where fiction is already controlled and enforced by cops. How much more explicit does it have to get to get through to you?

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saw someone say "an 11-year-old isn't even supposed to know what sex is and if you do something horrible must be happening to you and you need to get out of there" like can we be for real for a moment. have some people honest to god never heard 11-year-olds making sex jokes in their life

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For the first day of disability pride month I challenge you to treat people with bladder/bowl/other digestive tract problems like normal people. Not gross. Not a joke. Normal.

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Mushrooms are the reproductive organs of subterranean mycelial networks, and are typically harvested for food just before the stage of growth where they'd release their spores, so if certain fringe theories about mycelial intelligence are correct, we've basically made a culinary industry out of edging a hivemind.

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The foods you have been taught are bad for you or inherently unhealthy are actually vital to your survival. And no I don’t mean “cake is empty calories but it makes me happy so it’s worth it!” I mean that there is no such thing as empty calories. I mean that all food is food, and that all food is made of various nutrients vital for your survival, and that all food can contribute to your happiness and wellbeing and that is not in spite of its other qualities. We have to stop believing narratives that certain aspects of food are secretly the Good Ones and that others are the Bad Ones.

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what did they put in the word Snuggle to make it one of the most pervertedly adorable and charming and cuted words of all time

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“Half-naked grotesquely maimed man as the focus of artistic beauty for an entire continent for the span of ~1500 years” is so great. Christianity is almost certainly the most BDSM coded religion

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500-year-old Snake Figure from Peru (Incan Empire), c. 1450-1532 CE: this fiber craft snake was made from cotton and camelid hair, and it has a total length of 86.4cm (about 34in)

This piece was crafted by shaping a cotton core into the basic form of a snake and then wrapping it in structural cords. Colorful threads were then used to create the surface pattern, producing a zig-zag design that covers most of the snake's body. Some of its facial features were also decorated with embroidery.

A double-braided rope is attached to the distal end of the snake's body, near the tip of its tail, and another rope is attached along the ventral side, where it forms a small loop just behind the snake's lower jaw. Similar features have been found in other serpentine figures from the same region/time period, suggesting that these objects may have been designed for a common purpose.

Very little is known about the original function and significance of these artifacts; they may have been created as decorative elements, costume elements, ceremonial props, toys, gifts, grave goods, or simply as pieces of artwork.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art argues that this figure might have been used as a prop during a particular Andean tradition:

In a ritual combat known as ayllar, snakes made of wool were used as projectiles. This effigy snake may have been worn around the neck—a powerful personal adornment of the paramount Inca and his allies—until it was needed as a weapon. The wearer would then grab the cord, swing the snake, and hurl it in the direction of the opponent. The heavy head would propel the figure forward. The simultaneous release of many would produce a scenario of “flying snakes” thrown at enemies.

The same custom is described in an account from a Spanish chronicler named Cristóbal de Albornoz, who referred to the tradition as "the game of the ayllus and the Amaru" ("El juego de los ayllus y el Amaru").

The image below depicts a very similar artifact from the same region/time period.

Why Indigenous Artifacts Should be Returned to Indigenous Communities.

Sources & More Info:

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Snake Ornament

Serpent Symbology: Representations of Snakes in Art

Journal de la Société des Américanistes: El Juego de los ayllus y el Amaru

Yale University Art Gallery: Votive Fiber Sculpture of an Anaconda

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an interesting linguistics find! so I'm reading this text from 1908 and it keeps referencing "hp" in the context of "not being at full hp" "applying your full hp to a task" etc

and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean

and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere

horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.

and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader

I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight

language is amazing

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When will we get to talk about how concepts around ''ugliness'' is just basic human androgyny 99.9999% of the time.

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content: this character is terrible and doesn’t care about anyone but themselves

me: ok… but what if they didn’t care about anyone but themselves and ME :o

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Draw your selfship like this idk