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Same photo, different fonts.

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To quote an excerpt Ao3 comment I just wrote:

“Canon is the paint, fanon is the brushes, the hands are the original creator and the fandom simultaneously, and the painting is the franchise as a whole. Without fanon, all you have is a finger painting - which can be beautiful on its own with a lot of work and with someone who’s really fucking good at finger paintings (which is very rare, thus the need for brushes), but brushes really extenuate the paint’s strengths (and flaws)! Also note how I did not specify if the painting that symbolizes the franchise as a whole is finished or not. The painting is NEVER complete. As long as people know of the painting and the paint and the fingers and the brushes, the painting will continue to grow and thrive (or devolve)!”

Mind you, that excerpt from my comment is just that: an excerpt. The comment overall had NOTHING to do with this excerpt, it just somehow came up-?

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My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.

I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.

One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.

The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here

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I go to school board & city council meetings regarding trans rights, and something I noticed is that almost every single transfem student who has gone up to defend their right to use the women's lockers & bathrooms has reported being sexually assaulted in school, often multiple times, by cis men & boys.

And yet, what is taken more seriously is the single cisgender girl who went up to speak about her discomfort with trans girls in the lockers & bathrooms. Not danger. Not harm. Not trauma. Discomfort.

The cisgender girl spoke about how she was not comfortable, wheras the transgender girls spoke of how they were not safe. I am somehow supposed to believe these are of equal severity? Eat a fucking brick.

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Holding up snarky signs doesn't seem to be working.

For me, it isn't about whether this action is appropriate or not. It's about how this kind of action is inevitable.

I'm going to let Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explain in a quote no one seems to post during his annual holiday.

"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?"

If you only speak up about a supercharger catching fire and ignore the unheard, you are prioritizing a thing over people.

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The Dance of Zalongo (Greek: Χορός του Ζαλόγγου, Horos tou Zalongou) was a mass suicide of women from Souli and their children during the Souliote War of 1803, near the village of Zalongo in Epirus, in the then-Ottoman Empire. The name also refers to a popular dance-song commemorating the event. There is also a similar Albanian dance-song called Vaji i Zallogut (“Dance of Zalongo”).

History

During the Souliote War in December 1803, the Souliotes began evacuating Souli after their defeat by the forces of the local Ottoman-Albanian ruler, Ali Pasha During the evacuation, a small group of Souliot women and their children were trapped by Ali’s troops in the mountains of Zalongo in Epirus. In order to avoid capture and enslavement, the women threw their children first and then themselves off a steep cliff, committing suicide. According to the legend, they jumped down the precipice one after the other while singing and dancing. The incident soon became known across Europe. At the Paris Salon of 1827, the French artist Ary Scheffer exhibited two Romantic paintings, one of which was entitled Les Femme souliotes (“The Souliot Women”). Today, the Zalongo Monument on Mount Zalongo in Kassope commemorates their sacrifice.[

Songs

There is a popular Greek dance-song about the event, which is known and danced throughout Greece today. The Greek folk song “Dance of Zalongo” has the following lyrics:

  English

Greek

Farewell poor world, Farewell sweet life, and you, my poor country, Farewell forever Farewell springs, Valleys, mountains and hills Farewell springs And you, women of Souli The fish cannot live on the land Nor the flower on the sand And the women of Souli Cannot live without freedom Farewell springs, … The women of Souli Have not only learnt how to survive They also know how to die Not to tolerate slavery Farewell springs, …

Έχε γεια καημένε κόσμε, έχε γεια γλυκιά ζωή Και ’συ δύστυχη πατρίδα έχε γεια παντοτινή. Έχετε γεια βρυσούλες λόγγοι, βουνά, ραχούλες Έχετε γεια βρυσούλες και σεις Σουλιωτοπούλες Στη στεριά δε ζει το ψάρι ούτ’ ανθός στην αμμουδιά Κι οι Σουλιώτισσες δεν ζούνε δίχως την ελευθεριά. Έχετε γεια βρυσούλες … Οι Σουλιώτισσες δε μάθαν για να ζούνε μοναχά Ξέρουνε και να πεθαίνουν να μη στέργουν στη σκλαβιά. Έχετε γεια βρυσούλες …

An Albanian dance-song called Vaji i Zallogut (“Dance of Zalongo”) was developed with lyrics that refer to the same aforementioned mass suicide:[

English

Albanian

Mosko1 afoot, has left her baby in the ground, Hits this woman, this brave woman, Her gun and cannon everything scares. “Look here girls, how close they are!” Even walls became ash, but Dhespo1 as always stands up, To her girls speaks, with voice and calamity. “Girls, slaves of the Turkish can we be? Follow me, girls, our place is down there!”

Moskua në këmbë, foshnjën përdhe ka lënë, Qëllon a s’qëllon kjo grua, deli grua, Pushka top gjithçka zhurit. “Vështrojuni një çikë more, si jeni bërë meit!” Edhe muret u bënë hi, po Dhespua përherë në këmbë, Nuseve ç’u thërret, me zë e me gjëmë. “Skllave të turkut bija, a mund të bëhemi ne? Pas meje, mori nuse, vendin e kemi atje!”

1 Dhespo is the wife of Giorgos Botsaris and Mosko was the wife of Lambros Tzavelas.

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I have a love-hate relationship with a lot of the jokes made in the Epic fandom

Like on one hand, people using every word under the sun EXCEPT Telemachus’s actual name (telegraph, telemarking, telephone, etc) is silly - but on the other hand (the “I’m Greek and also a very huge nerd about Greek history/myth” hand), I sometimes find it a bit disrespectful ig? Same thing with the “Odysseus Manwhore AU”, the whole “male wife Polities”, or “Odysseus/Polities” thing- like ik they’re just jokes, but they do kinda rub me the wrong way bc I feel like people aren’t really being respectful about the original myth - especially with the weird infantilizing of Telemachus (which is furthered by people infantilizing Mico and comparing him to Telemachus)

I’m not saying people shouldn’t make jokes, but I would prefer it if people did a bit of research before hand, and/or made it very clear they’re talking about Epic and not ‘canon’ (for lack of better words) Odysseus. There’s also the issue of people’s only exposure to “The Odyssey” being EPIC and them treating it as ‘canon’ when Jorge has made it ABUNDANTLY clear that it’s an adaptation.

All of this makes me wonder if this is how U.S history nerds felt during Hamilton-

MY POINT IS: I’m all for silly jokes and what not, just

try to be respectful to the original myth & the fact that Hellenic paganism/Hellenism is still an actively practiced religion

don’t infantilize artists and compare them to a character they play (a character that is a 20 yo. warrior, not some wounded child)

remember that Epic ≠ the actual Odyssey; you can make headcannons about Epic because it is an adaptation, but headcanon-ing gets extremely complicated when they’re about a thousand year old myth (like- you’re able to interpret things a certain way, or believe in certain versions/retellings but when you’re working with the actual historical poem, a certain regard for what has been actually written by Homer needs to be had)

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I'm just going to say very bluntly that if you think wearing pink suits to Trump's speech is all Democrats have done over the past 6.5 weeks, not only are you extremely uninformed to the point where you should be deeply embarrassed of your own posts, but you are completely falling for obvious misinformation that's designed to direct all of your ire at Democrats right now instead of Trump and Republicans. You are stupid and gullible and you should feel bad.

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I was going to write a post, asking which of two topics I should rant about - but then in the process of explaining the second topic, I couldn’t stop typing so I think I answered my own question. Behold my incoherent thoughts on queer & trans representation in media!

I find it infuriating that even though we have come so incredibly far in terms of social acceptance of the queer and trans community in such a short time (gay marriage was only legalized in June of 2015, aka a little under 10 years ago), we are severely lacking in genuinely good queer/trans representation.

I try to give old tv/classics (TV from the 1920s to the 2000s) some slack because they were very much “of their time”, by which I mean: in the times they were filmed, marginalized communities were still actively fighting for their civil rights, and the ability to live peacefully without oppression and discrimination. Even though we are still fighting for many of the same civil liberties today, we can all agree (to some degree) that things are better than they were a hundred years ago. Things have changed drastically throughout time, for better and for worse, and just as our social norms changed, so did our media. For example, the same jokes made in Law & Order SVU (1999) are significantly rarer today. It was considered okay to make those kinds of jokes in the 90s, and today the majority of people find it offensive. As we grow and become more accepting, our tolerance of certain behaviors changes because we realize how harmful those behaviors were. Media is a reflection of the social norms/current events of the time.

However: even though we’ve definitely made a lot of progress as a society and there’s less blatantly ignorant mainstream media, I’m still noticing so many flaws in queer/trans representation. I know that we still have so much more social change we need to make but I expected our representation to be better than what it currently is. The little we do have is either:

1) A clusterfuck of stereotypes and antigay/trans propaganda (I’m looking at you, “Emilia Pérez” [seriously how the fuck did that dumpster-fire get 13 Oscar nominations])

2) Fetishization of queer/trans people (I highly recommend reading the attached articles, they explain it very well ⬇️)

3) Putting the love interests through such agony that can only be described as a love child of the labors of Heracles and all 9 circles of hell [bonus points if one/both of them dies tragically/painfully, if they never get together/hate each other, or end up in a straight relationship] (Yae Miko & Raiden Ei in Genshin Impact [which can also go into the queerbaiting category but I digress], Catra & Adora in She-Ra, etc)

4) Queerbaiting (Keith & Lance in Voltron, JJ & Emily in Criminal Minds, Kara & Lena in Supergirl)

Tbh I can’t remember where I was going with this-I just started writing after seeing an edit of Yae Miko and Ei on tiktok to “would you fall in love with me again” from Epic: The Musical, and then I proceeded to go down this particular rabbit hole.

MY POINT IS: give me media with sapphics who communicate, love each other faithfully and fiercely, and don’t die! Is that REALLY so much to ask for?

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Listening to the Ithaca saga, where Odysseus finally gets his happy ending, and then going back to do a full listen through, listening to Odysseus have every joy stripped of him again and again, it's a new kind of pain-