everythingbutthekitchensphinx

[everythingbutthekitchensphinx]

some different looks for our dear archivist 

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Natasia Demetriou as Nadja in What We Do In The Shadows FX 

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[everythingbutthekitchensphinx]

One story element I’d like to see more of is the targeted bride-price

Something like:  the newly-widowed queen knows she and her daughter won’t be allowed to rule their country themselves, so she has to agree that her daughter be married.  But she wants to ensure that her daughter gets a husband who will treat her well and that her land gets a ruler who will treat it well, so she rigs the game.  

Mercedes Lackey did a most excellent job of this in her 500 Kingdoms book The Sleeping Beauty, where the final challenge of the tournament to win the princess’ hand is to find a way to permanently protect their small but rich country from their many greedy neighbors (the winning concept is brilliant, btw, I grin every time)

I’m thinking also of that neat comic with the witch who says she’ll marry whoever gets the key from around her cat’s neck–but she is also the cat, and the only way to get the key is to befriend her. that’s a really great example and also one of the few I can think of where the person is setting their own bride-price, double credit.

any of those ‘the youngest/weakest wins by being clever’ or ‘the kind one wins by getting help from allies they helped along the way’ stories have potential to qualify, but I want specifically the ones where the person setting the bride-price did it that way on purpose to ensure a clever or kind winner

same for any of those stories where the thing which must be retrieved is incredibly fragile and only a careful, gentle person could retrieve it

or it’s worth a fortune and only an honest, selfless person could pass it up for the quest, y’all get the idea

or, genre-swap:  the mob boss has a handsome, powerful son, and all the other mob leaders keep trying to arrange for their beautiful eligible daughters to cross his path, and the mob boss says instead that the one who brings the most to the table will be allowed to marry their son

this phrasing I like because it’s got two possible subversions! 

1) all the mob-parents keep trying to show off their resources and the boss gets to say ‘no, none of these count unless you’re trying to marry my son. what do your kids have to offer him’ and then whoever’s the most badass all on their own gets to win

or 2) mob-son is actually in love with a nice straight-arrow baker from down the road, who comes and brings a brace of pies literally to the table, and wins on a proper fairytale technicality

I just super dig the idea of taking the big heavy traditional concept of a bride-price (and the ensuant actual selling of a bride) and turning it instead into the mechanism by which a clever and caring person makes sure that they/their kid/their country will be safe and happy in the future

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The Fair Wants You To Die🎪🎟🤢

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Torsten Dettlaff

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basically if youre in the place to educate yourself on these topics and you arent

a prison abolitionist,

a harm reductionist,

for decriminilization,

and giving the land back

i really do not think your assertions of “ACAB” or “be gay do crimes” or “revolution” hold much weight

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beiny

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A Geneticist's Invocation to the Ancestors

I honour my Ancestors, whose struggles and successes are written in my genome. I honour Mitochondrial Eve, Y Chromosome Adam, and the haplotypes that walked out of the cradle of humanity to every corner of the world.

To each and every Ancestor – who struggled and fought and lived and died – but never too soon to pass on their phenotype – through the mists of time, I salute you!

To LUCA, the cenancestor, the root of the Tree of Life, three billion years old – through the mists of time, I salute you!

To the first of the cells, born from the cradle of the RNA World – I salute you!

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The Psychopomp

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My favorite professor quote of today: "Mysticism is like pornography: Everyone knows what it is but no one knows how to properly describe it"

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Illustrations by Ejiwa Ebenebe (Edge)

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We really need to address the fact that women aren't more likely to be asexual than men. Ace men are more likely to be closeted especially to themselves because society tells them that they must be sexual/are sex obsessed/be attracted to people and in particular women. And it can be extrememly difficult to look at yourself and say "wow I guess I'm not the way society says I should be".

Ace men deserve mad respect for figuring themselves out.

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fairy tale meme ❧ [2/8 heroines] little red riding hood

One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, “Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter.” Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.

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An Ancient Greek Transgender Person

We read this passage in class yesterday and I thought it might interest youse guys. The passage is from Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans 5; it’s a discussion between Clonarium, a young man, and Leaena, a courtesan who had an unusual experience at a drinking party.

Eventually Megilla, being now rather heated, pulled off her wig, which was very realistic and fitted very closely, and revealed the skin of her head which was shaved close, just as on the most energetic of athletes. This sight gave me a shock, but she said, ‘Leaena, have you ever seen such a good-looking young fellow?’ ‘I don’t see one here, Megilla,’ said I. ‘Don’t make a woman out of me,’ said she. ‘My name is Megillus, and I’ve been married to Demonassa here for ever so long; she’s my wife.’ ‘Then, unknown to us, Megillus, you were a man all the time, just as they say Achilles once hid among the girls, and you have everything that a man has, and can play the part of a man to Demonassa?’ ‘I haven’t got what you mean,’ said she, ‘I don’t need it at all. You’ll find I have a much pleasanter method of my own.’ ‘You’re surely not a hermaphrodite,’ said I, ‘equipped both as a man and a woman, as many people are said to be?’; for I still didn’t know, Cleonarium, what it was all about. But she said, ‘No, Leaena, I’m all man.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard the Boeotian flute-girl, Ismenodora, repeating tales she’d heard at home, and telling us how someone at Thebes had turned from woman to man, someone who was also an excellent soothsayer, and was, I think, called Tiresias. That didn’t happen to you, did it?’ ‘No, Leaena,’ she said, ‘I was born a woman like the rest of you, but I have the mind and the desires and everything else of a man.’ ‘And do you find these desires enough?’ said I. ‘If you don’t believe me, Leaena,’ said she, ‘just give me a chance, and you’ll find I’m as good as any man; I have a substitute of my own. Only give me a chance, and you’ll see.’

Translation: M. D. Macleod, Loeb, 1961.

So Megilla - who, as a side note, is from Lesbos - was born a woman but identifies as a man, going by Megillus. Still, for some reason, they* disguise themselves as a woman. The whole situation is a bit confusing but the bolded bit is clear: Megilla/Megillus is, in modern terms, transgender.

Lucian’s Dialogues are fictional, but the fact he mentions a trans person speaks for their existence at the time. Remember that whenever people claim trans people are a recent phenomenon!

*I’m using they/them pronouns because it’s unclear exactly how they refer to themselves. Greek conjugated verbs are mostly non-gendered (so what the translation renders as ‘she said’ is actually ‘he/she/they said’), but there is one participle in the feminine (οὐδὲν ἐνδέουσάν με τῶν ἀνδρῶν, I’m as good as any man) despite Megilla/Megillus asking Leaena not to refer to them as a woman. So, unclear.

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Illustrations by Ejiwa Ebenebe (Edge)

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