batrogers - Tumblr blog

[batrogers]

thinking about the poll about canon vs non-canon ships that didn't define terms, and the current fandom focus on things "going canon," so i made up a scale.

this is NOT a question about whether canon matters to what you ship (or matters at all), just how to define the phrase "canon ship."

many ships start low on the scale and slow burn their way up, so vote for the point when you would have called them "canon." i agonized over the order (especially #4-6) for a day and a half, but i went with the order in which i think joe random with a nielsen ratings box and no tumblr account would notice/call something a romantic relationship.

[batrogers]

this couldn’t be said any better

[batrogers]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: it's more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It's performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.

[batrogers]

little thingy from the other week, stuff on my mind

[batrogers]

[batrogers]

Your moral ocd is lying to you and tumblr is lying to you. you do NOT have to reblog any post you dont want to and you dont need to justify it and youre not prejudiced against a certain marginalized group if you dont reblog an Upsetting Post about a Current Issue said group is facing

[batrogers]

For reference:

Serif fonts have the hooks on the end (called serifs)

popular fonts include: Garamond, Cambria, Times New Roman, etc.

Sans-serif fonts don't have serifs

popular fonts include: Helvetica, Open Sans, Roboto, etc.

(please RB if you vote!)

[batrogers]

Summary:

Malon writes her husband with some unexpected news, and a few probing questions about how her loving husband who most certainly can't get pregnant on his own managed it. She has her suspicions.

Rated M, for sexual content. Epistolary fic, Crack premise although played straight. Written to be funny as Hell, no jealousy.

Poly Malon/Time, implied Lullaby/Time and trans Time & Lullaby.

(Epistolary fic means "written in document format", aka Malon's letter to Time.)

[batrogers]

That cool bee book I was talking about a while ago mostly refrains from philosophical digressions (which I think is a strength, I appreciated how the author had total confidence that just clearly presenting the facts about his subject would be enough to make a fascinating book without the need for any "...and here's why that should blow your mind" editorializing, and he's totally right), but there was one towards the end I've found myself thinking about a lot, which is: he wants people to stop using "self-consciousness" (i.e. the concept exemplified by the mirror test but used implicitly or explicitly in tons of other contexts) as a criterion for which animals can be considered sentient/morally relevant/having significant inner lives/however you want to describe it. Not, as you might expect, because he thinks it's an unreasonably high bar to meet, but because it's such a low bar that it produces no distinctions: he argues that basically any animal with any kind of developed central nervous system has to have some kind of self-consciousness almost by definition.

The example I remember best is: imagine you can see an object in your visual field getting closer to you. No matter the specifics, it's obviously always going to make a huge difference to how you evaluate this situation whether the cause of the object getting closer is a] the object is moving towards you, or b] you are moving towards the object. If a, then something might be pursuing you or falling on you or a thousand other things that are just not even worth considering in the case of b. But visually the two cases are indistinguishable; if you're going to be able to track the difference, your brain has to be putting at least some work into keeping tabs on what your own intentions are and what choices you're making as you move through the world, predicting the expected consequences of those choices, and maintaining a fairly tidy mental separation between stuff in the world that you're making happen and stuff in the world that's just happening of its own volition. Otherwise, every time you walk towards a rock you'll freak out and think the rock is rolling into you, or vice versa.

And it's not hard to see how this applies to your entire sensory world right, it applies to sounds and tactile sensations and even feelings internal to your body to some extent, if you're going to both perceive the world and take actions in the world then it's mandatory to mentally separate yourself and the world before that's going to yield even an ounce of helpful information, you just can't function successfully on the most basic level if you're processing stuff that you're doing on the same level as stuff that's happening, if you're in that state then you simply don't have a usable model of the world at all, you just have chaos.

So you can very easily eliminate a certain seductive narrative about the evolution of consciousness, which starts with very primitive animals who are mentally processing nothing but basic sensory inputs, then as you rise up the chain more complex animals are forming concepts of objects and building up a more nuanced understanding of the world, until finally you approach humans and the mind becomes so subtle and sophisticated that it gains access to this special advanced meta-level of thought where it can even understand itself! No, the self is precisely the one idea that has to be in place from the very beginning, before any of it has even the most rudimentary practical value. Self-consciousness isn't the pinnacle of the mind's evolution, it's one of the lowest, most basic foundations that everything else builds off of.

I think this is really cool stuff! I don't know enough about the relevant academic philosophy of mind debates to say how far all this does or doesn't speak to that, maybe someone will tell me the "self-consciousness" concept being attacked here is a strawman somehow, I don't know. But it's definitely impacted the way I (just a dumb guy who likes creatures) think about our small small cousins and what their lives might be like and I think it's super interesting. If you think it's interesting too then maybe you wanna buy The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka and read it. It's mostly not about this stuff, as I say it's light on philosophy and heavy on bee-life immersion, but if you actually read this whole post then you're probably in the market for that I feel like.

[batrogers]

things i’ll not call you a whore for:

sexual activity

how you dress

things i’ll call you a whore for:

stealing my food 

stealing my lemons

my cat likes you more than me

[batrogers]

[@batrogers requested 30; “It was just a nightmare, love. It wasn’t real.”]

[this was hoarded in my drafts for a while, then finally written and posted as a 20 followers prize for @overcome-series]

****

Ravio woke in the dead of night, and didn't have to wonder what had roused him. Link was curled around him, like he had been when Ravio closed his eyes for the night, and Ravio could feel his partner's every tiny movement. Erratic twitching and quiet whimpers told Ravio that Link was, without a doubt, trapped in a nightmare.

Ravio couldn't wake Link himself (at best Link wouldn't respond, at worst he would be even more hysterical upon waking) so he wrapped his arms around his partner and sent his comfort until it was over.

He still flinched when Link jerked awake with a bitten-off scream, and offered no resistance when his partner panicked and pushed himself away. Ravio shut his eyes tight, hoping that Link would come to his senses before he hurt himself, but there was a loud thud as Link fell to the floor.

Sheerow broke the silence with a sleepy, inquisitive chirp, and Ravio shushed the bird before untangling himself from the blankets. He dropped gently from the bed and sat in front of Link, silent and waiting.

Slowly, his partner recovered from the shock, looking anxiously around the room. He froze, seeing that Ravio was there with an outstretched hand, and slowly reached to take it. Link's fingers were shaking too much to hold it back, but Ravio squeezed his hand and said the words he was waiting to hear.

"It was just a nightmare, love. It wasn't real."

Link's eyes glinted in the moonlight, tears forming as the first sob left him and he fell again, this time into Ravio's waiting arms.

"I don't wanna go back to bed," Link whimpered after a while, his voice only half-there from crying.

"I know, bun," Ravio soothed, tracing circles behind his partner's ear. "Let's get a drink from the kitchen and figure things out from there."

[batrogers]

[batrogers]

some of my favorite replies to this tweet. happy lesbian visibility week!