akallabeth-joie

[akallabeth-joie]

This is how I find out that they broke out of the Padelford "Hall" Warding Glyph?!

Seattle Fact # 1,123,581,321,345,791:

The math department at UW has trapped the city in a Fibonacci spell, HELP

[akallabeth-joie]

got another code red moment for us... :/

please actually reblog this post this time, as this one will gut national parks for more fucking paper. we have 14 days to stop it, giving us literally no time to do so.

they are literally betting on us to not do anything about it, because they're that desperate on keeping control, and ruining lives for everyone, but themselves.

[akallabeth-joie]

i'm hollering

[akallabeth-joie]

IRS Free Online Tax Preparation Feedback Survey

For anyone in the US, the IRS just dropped a survey asking if people would like to file for free. People should take the survey!

[akallabeth-joie]

Paging @pilferingapples, you have a new ally on the "Make Bahorel & Gavroche besties" agenda.

Grantaire confuses me, I guess he's the ami in the musical with the most distinct character design after Enjolras? But Courfeyrac and Bossuet's thing is adopting new friends, aka Marius, so I think they make the most sense after Bahorel is mysteriously not included in an adaptation. Again.

As much as I love Grantaire and Courfeyrac being Gavroche's besties slash brother figures...

Why is it never Bahorel and Gavroche. Gavroche had literally met Les Amis five minutes earlier and he immediately went "I need this man to be my best friend". And stuck with him for the following hour.

But Bahorel is too busy not being included in adaptations to always be Gavroche's friend also he dies

[akallabeth-joie]

Not completely sure what's going on

And somewhat reluctant to check the actual news because if something does happen, I kind of want to find out from my Tumblr buddies Dean and Cas, knowwhatImean?

[akallabeth-joie]

FWIW, Elan attended Bard Camp in the comics.

Wait, so not only does the US apparently have an accredited university called Bard College, some of the Dropout.TV guys who are into D&D actually went there?

This is some Order of the Stick nonsense. This cannot be for real. You gonna tell me that Fighter College and Wizard University are real places next?

[akallabeth-joie]

no actually I do want to go back to Csevet being a Jane Austen (sorry, 'Göelar') fan and Celehar not liking them lmfao. Hilarious character microcosm. Celehar dismisses them as 'delicate intricate courtships amongst the upper classes' because his disinterest in the social sphere he was born into (and then kicked out of, several times) is so complete; he reads them for something to do, but doesn't have an interest in returning to high society even fictionally.

Csevet presumably loves them (he has the new Göelar, he's keeping up) because they're social satires and his whole damn life is social satire. He's an outsider to high society (even as secretary, he's still Aisava as opposed to Celehar) and he literally LIVES the Austen-narrator role of being able to observe all these annoying rich people all the time (without being paid attention to himself) and knowing Exactly what their deal is— the Austen narrator can do this because she invented free indirect discourse; Csevet can do this because he reads their post. I imagine he finds a lot of very familiar situations and people within them. Also frankly I can see him having a weakness for Austenian romance. It's so proper! He loves propriety!

Which is additionally hilarious because he was basically the one who chose Maia's wife for him. You know the task landed in his lap and he carefully closed Ethuverazhin Pride and Prejudice and was like well. I have been training my entire life for this moment. It is time to Make A High Society Match.

[akallabeth-joie]

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has just died and I am seeing a woeful lack of crab raves on my dash.

[akallabeth-joie]

Which, if we have Valancy born in 1887 and Barney in 1881... She could absolutely have been collecting her button string in the mid-1890s while Victoria still reigned. Though pompadours would have been a relatively new style rather than merely "still in" when she first put her hair up as a teen sometime around 1903 (and only a handful of years out of date at story time).

I'm rather concerned about what this means for their world travel plans, if they're starting in France in the autumn of 1917.

The editor of The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript thinks that the novel takes place in 1926 but her note about Tin Lizzies being produced from 1908 to 1927 makes me think that the novel takes place before WWI, in the early 1910s. Otherwise I’m not sure how Barney (who the editor says would have been in his 20s during WWI) would have escaped getting conscripted.

[akallabeth-joie]

The best piece of dating information to come out of our previous discussion was that the disappearing propeller boat wasn't produced until 1916, which makes that the earliest possible year for the story to start.

The editor of The Blue Castle: The Original Manuscript thinks that the novel takes place in 1926 but her note about Tin Lizzies being produced from 1908 to 1927 makes me think that the novel takes place before WWI, in the early 1910s. Otherwise I’m not sure how Barney (who the editor says would have been in his 20s during WWI) would have escaped getting conscripted.

[akallabeth-joie]

Want to add something to the whole "YouTube ID protest" thing- (More info about this here if you need it)

If you're participating in refusing to use YouTube from the 13th of August until the ID policy is lifted, there is a chance you might accidentally use YouTube in one way or another.

Muscle memory, autopilot, a misclick, any number of things, please don't let that mistake cause you to give up! We are human, we make mistakes, but as long as you correct it and continue the protest it will reduce the damage and keep the viewership loss on YouTube high, increasing the chance of success! That's what matters, that we keep trying. We need to show that even if we trip and fall, we'll just get back up and keep going!

I believe in you, even if you make a mistake, I'll keep believing in you, as long as you keep trying!

We will succeed. We refuse to be tracked or censored. We deserve our privacy!

Privacy is a human right, NOT a privilege!

[akallabeth-joie]

Congratulations Agatha Hetrodyne, Dread Lady of Mechanicsburg for being the winner of the 2025 Mad Scientist Showdown! It was a narrow victory, being 50.2% against her opponent, GLaDOS

1st, I would like to thank EVERYONE WHO SHOWED UP! This was very fun and I dearly hope that all of you had fun as well!

2nd, as promised I WILL be starting Girl Genius in Agatha's honor, a promise is a promise

(3rd under the cut)

3rd, I would like to give out a bunch of ah... Honorable Mention awards

Losers Bracket Winner: The Brain

Most Controversial Inclusion: TIE: Dr Carlos Dave Robles/Cave Johnson

Funniest Propaganda: Dr Heinz Doofenshmirtz with 'You SEE Perry the Platipus-'

Most Impressive Propaganda: Dr Carmilla, with Propaganda that informed me that Tumblr has a tag limit??

Most Propaganda: Agatha Heterodyne

Most Propaganda on a Single Post (Pre Finals) : Dr Alexander Hilbert

Objectively Most Upsetting Loss: Victor Frankenstein

Most Upsetting Loss for Mod: Dr Jonathan Crane

Voted Funniest Possible Finals: Shockwave v Shockwave

Biggest Underdog: Chin Kid

That's all I can think of right now. Anyways, thank everyone who has come this far!

[akallabeth-joie]

PLEASE VOTE AGTHA HETERODYNE FOR #1 MAD SCIENTIST, RIGHT NOW!

I’m so sorry for the spam today but it is neck and fucking neck and my girl deserves a WIN. For any love that love thou bearst me, VOTE AGATHA!!

[akallabeth-joie]

The fact that we don't have a Clueless-style Northanger Abbey adaptation where Catherine Morland is the most heartbreakingly earnest and unselfaware teenage fangirl with one of the longest self-insert fics on Ao3 is actually a tragedy

[akallabeth-joie]

Hey guys something fucking bad happened

KOSA/the kids online safety act has been reintroduced into legislature after it passed Senate last year and then got snubbed. It is not unlike the bill that just passed in the UK a few weeks ago. If you don't want what happened in the UK to happen here, now would be a good time to vocally oppose it.

Here is a petition that can be signed by Americans. Attached to the petition is an easy tool that allows you to call and leave messages for your representatives. I have already done so. You can also email your representatives by searching for their name, most have message submission boards as well. This thing died once, it can die again.

Please sign/share the petition and contact your representatives.

[akallabeth-joie]

okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)