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still not over the stephen colbert thing, the way they're punishing him so much by not only essentially firing him but cancelling the show he loves in its entirety, which means also punishing all 200 people who work for and with him on the show.

it is setting an example. it's saying, "this is what happens when you speak truth to power. we will not only punish you. we'll punish the people around you that you've led and loved. is it worth it now, stephen? would it be worth it, other late night talk show hosts? if you don't keep quiet, we will quiet you". the other late night talk show hosts are not all under paramount (iirc, it's just the daily show), but this sets a precedent that tells them they are all vulnerable.

"it's not a big deal" idk man it really seems like it is

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it is making me insane in a different way than god meant me to be insane to see phrases like "the lesson of animal farm is" like that's a normal thing that we should all be trying to determine. that's why people write books, right, they just bang together a trojan horse within which crouches The Lesson The Author Wanted to Convey, which can either be a Correct and Good lesson or an Incorrect and Bad lesson. bonebreaking concept to me. like i know it's my own fault for reading sentences on the Just Saying Stuff Recreationally website (and i am also saying stuff recreationally all the time by the way, right now even!) but animal farm is a book. george orwell certainly had beliefs of which he wanted to convince his readers but "animal farm" is a book. if you learn something real while reading the book or afterwards that's great but the book was not the lesson. the lesson comes if it comes at all from the multidimensional venn diagram between your world and george orwell's world and the book he wrote. if novels were supposed to be lessons they would be powerpoints. please help me

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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)

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Sorting Logan Roy

(More Succession sortings to follow. Spoilers, obviously. More details about the system I'm using are here, but I do explain what I mean as I go along.) 

Primary - WHY he does things

Logan Roy is so intensely Loyalist that he doesn’t even seem to believe in ideals as a concept. Patriotism? Rule of Law? Freedom of the press? Running a vaguely ethical and sustainable company? Nah. As he says “The law is politics, and politics is people.” And as Rhea says, “I don’t know if you care about anything, and that scares me.” And she’s... almost right. As Logan puts it: “Most things don’t exist, but this exists, because this is a family.”

This is where I’m going to argue that he’s actually a Badger primary. 

Now, obviously Logan comes from the Tony Soprano & Walter White school of “I did it all for my family.” Basically, every character on the show calls bullshit on that at least once. And it IS bullshirt…  because of the way Logan Roy thinks about “family” / the Badger primary idea of “community.” In his head, there are weak people, and there are strong people, and he doesn’t owe weak people anything - not the truth, not his respect, not his time. 

But how he defines “strong” is interesting. Because Logan is all about his come-from-nothing roots, and (at the time of the show anyway) he has no respect for the intelligentsia, old money, social elites... and anyone who has ever had anything given to them. Like, Logan has fundamentally never quite stopped being a poor boy. He doesn’t have expensive taste - as Shiv puts it “Everything you get him will mean an equal amount of nothing, so make sure it looks like 10 to 15 grand.” Money is power, that's all. That is why he cares how much you spent on him, but doesn’t really care about the object. (The expensive watch that Tom eventually buys ends up given to the staff.) Logan also really leans into this earthy, “unsophisticated” manner of speaking - he swears a lot, he uses a lot of sexual metaphors. And on him (depending on the context) it’s either legitimately scary and intimidating, or kind of vaguely salt-of-the Earth and trustworthy. (It's very silly on his son Kendall, because Kendall's every inch a rich boy.)

I think the names of Logan’s kids reflect his changing relationship with power extremely well. We start with Connor - an Irish name, and Logan is Scottish - but it still seems to reflect some sort of ethnic/class solidarity (very young Badger.) It’s also pretty neutral as names go, which probably means that at one point Logan wasn’t as focused on this question of power (and related topics - heirs and succession - as he would later become.) Connor, uniquely, seems to have been actually parented by his father at one point, in a way that none of his younger siblings were. 

Kendall is a WASP name. ‘Kendall’ invokes old money, East Coast/European power, the type of people that the Pierces (who assume that anyone who sits at their dinner table will be able to quote Shakespeare from memory) are. It also explains Caroline, Logan’s second wife. She’s British old money, and when he married her that must have seemed like a pretty good get. But... at some point Logan seems to have become disillusioned with this type of power: 

“Refined? Slaves. Cotton. Sugar. This country’s nothing but an off-shore laundry for turning evil into hard currency. And now it just lies here, living off its capital, sucking in immigrants to turn it to stop it getting bed sores.”

Notice how Logan is talking about England with the language of illness and weakness here. This does seem to be something he authentically feels, and it’s very central to his worldview. 

Logan’s only daughter is Siobhan - another Irish name that doesn’t have *anything* to do with power. And that’s because he’s - sexist, and fundamentally doesn’t believe that power as he defines it is for women. Mostly he calls Siobhan ‘Pinky,’ referencing her red hair and just general femininity (pink = feminine.) The fact that her nickname “Shiv” is an improvised weapon means this is someone who is going to have to grab at unconventional types of power, if she wants it.

And then the youngest* is Roman.  Which is as close to just calling your kid “power” in the abstract as you can possibly get. The Roman Empire, it’s well - there’s a reason I’m writing this with the Roman alphabet right now. Logan also tends to call Roman “Romulus,” the mythical founder of Rome who killed his brother Remus. There’s a lot baked into that. It reflects Logan’s belief that power must be taken at the expense of others, and perhaps a hope that Roman will supplant his older brothers - there is a significant age gap between Roman and the older two. It is very possible that when Roman was conceived, Logan was probably already of the opinion that neither Connor nor Kendall was cutting it. 

(in a darkly funny moment, Roman thinks that Logan is actively trying to repeat this move, and father a new son because Roman isn’t cutting it. But he dies before he’s able to.) 

[*Edit - it's unclear if Shiv or Roman is the youngest. It seems like Shiv was originally intended to be the youngest, and this was soft-retconned as the show went on. Roman says to “ask Shiv” about the dog cage incident that supposedly happened when he was four, which implies that Shiv had to be at least four, and probably older.]

Anyway, this show is called Sucession, and Logan wants a successor - someone who is powerful and worthy of inheriting his empire. But because of the way he defines power, this can never be his kids. They, his nephew, and every member of his family… are people who Logan fundamentally cannot respect, because they’re rich kids born into privilege, which is something he associates with weakness. 

The only members of his immediate family that this doesn’t apply are his brother Ewan (who Logan absolutely respects, even though Ewan finds him disgusting), his third wife Marcia (who he also respects. Not enough to be faithful or anything, but he gives her what she wants without haggling.) And… Tom. 

Shiv’s husband Tom Wambsgans doesn’t have a working class background, but he is like - firmly middle class. And that does help him eventually worm himself into Logan‘s trust and good graces… which is why he ends up as CEO. Of course, he’s only a figurehead CEO - Tom married power, which is not the correct way to seize it (a little femme-coded.) The *real* CEO is of course Lukas Matsson - who (like Logan) does a sort of performative disregard-for-weath thing (sleeping on bare mattresses on his private island), gets into debt and then makes deals to to cover up on them, plays power games with the members of his staff, and likes to present as an ‘disruptor.’ Basically, Logan left his company to himself, only 40 years younger.

When talking about his kids, he often falls back on dehumanizing language (a Badger classic) - “You’re not serious people” is the main one. If you were to ask Logan, most of the world is “people pretending to be people” - and as such, he doesn’t have to care about them. 

But the thing is. If power is what makes you worthy/a person, and power is also something that must be taken… what happens when Logan’s power slips. And the answer is… he can't handle it. His first big medical scare is triggered by Shiv challenging his authority, the second by Roman and the third by Kendall doing the same thing. He slaps his grandson Iverson after he says “You lose!” in the context of a memory game. He completely blows up after a perceived (false) snub from the president, and has another melt-down after Kendall asks “Are you okay?” Marcia is out the second she says, “You’re old, and you haven’t been well.” That's is the case with his other romantic partners too - Rhea is replaced with Kerry after she realizes just how much Logan has been lying to her: “It’s kind of a super power, isn’t it. To lie to someone like that, to their face.” And Caroline was probably replaced with Marcia once she got to know Logan well enough to say things like. “He never saw anything he loved that he didn’t want to kick it to see if it would still come back.”

Logan is uninterested in the stuff that money can buy (the way that Kendall and Tom are.) He only cares about power in the abstract, and power is how many people he controls. When he's under threat, he'll say things like - “I think I need more people. More protection.”

This is another way Tom endears himself to Logan. Tom is willing to crawl around and oink like a piggy if Logan wants him to. Or go to jail for Logan, if Logan needs him too. Logan seems to genuinely enjoy how blindly loyal Roman is to him for most of the show. BUT he doesn’t really respect either of them. Logan’s ideal relationship would be with someone who is both powerful enough to matter… and who he can completely control. Because the prospect of losing even a speck of his power is too frightening. That would mean losing his own personhood. 

The place where Logan comes closest to actually having this ideal relationship is with Kendall. Of the four siblings, Kendall is the one who fights against his father the most. Logan smiles when Kendall testifies against him during the coverup Senate hearing… and of course he does. For a second, this is a version of Kendall who is strong enough to be a person in his eyes. 

Then Kendall kills (manslaughters) a valet, Logan fixes the situation and…  becomes as soft and loving as we ever see him. Shiv comments on how out of character this is: “Dad, you beat Roman with a fսcking slipper in Gustav till he cried for ordering lobster, remember? And Kendall tries to kill you [in a business sense] and he's five minutes out in the cold?"

But it makes perfect sense. No one else knows about the valet cover-up, so publicly Kendall is still commanding respect… but because Logan has blackmail material, he owns him. Kendall is both powerful enough to be a credit to Logan, and someone who will do ANYTHING for him. Therefore, making Logan feel like the most powerful (worthy) person in the entire world. He has Kendall destroy and strip his pet company for parts, break up with his girlfriend, interact with the dead valet’s family, publically read out scripts that Logan’s written, throwing his siblings under the bus. Some of that’s practical, but most of it’s just Logan reveling in his power on a grand scale. And every time Kendall does one of these things… Logan just loves him more. Kendall’s girlfriend is absolutely right when she says “he loves the broken you," because the broken version of Kendall is the one who is affirming and flattering. 

To summarize, Logan is a Badger primary. He maintains a connection to his original community, expressed through his loyalty to his brother, general interest in his heritage and doing things like returning to the places that he knew as a kid. That’s all very Badger-flavored stuff. He loves to use Badger language of “family,” both when talking about his company and his motivations. Only, community is people with power, and power is “worked your way up into a place of influence from nothing.” (So: a definition that basically only includes him.) Logan isn't a loner - he is going to do that Badger primary thing of creating community almost accidentally - but he IS looking for someone both strong enough for him to respect and weak enough to always make him feel powerful. This is a very difficult balance to hit - which is why he cycles through wives and girlfriends, and why his most loving relationship in the show seems to be Kendall, during the period when he is actively blackmailing him.

Secondary - HOW he does things 

This one is a little tricky, because by the time we actually meet Logan, near the end of his career - he barely even needs problem solving strategies. He just tells people what he wants and they do it. BUT… there are definitely places where he has to deal with people who are at a similar power level. And with those people… Logan's a charmer. He goes into his meet-up with the Pierces with a very specific plan, knows which of his people needs to talk with which of their people, tells Connor to stay away from certain subjects - etc. He also comes in with a very good idea of what the Pierces want to hear - Logan will own the network, but he respects their vision and  legacy and doesn’t want to change the product. He knows to ask about the board members' kids, and he knows exactly how to make an offer that his ex-wife can’t refuse.

He also uses some very interesting tactical mirroring with Mattson during a very high-stakes conversation: 

LOGAN. So, what do you think? We doing this fucking merger or not?  MATTSON. Wow, just straight in there huh?  LOGAN. Well you know, I’m old. What do you want, a bit of ‘oh this is a nice house you’ve got here.’  MATTSON. No, I like it. I get bored easily.  LOGAN. Everything’s boring, isn’t it?  MATTSON. Yeah, everything is pretty fucking boring.  LOGAN. Except this.  MATTSON. Yeah, you got me interested (...) I don’t want to be rude, because you’re a legend. You’re bulletproof. Fucking… tank man.  LOGAN. So you want me to come in your sauna and tell you what a pretty pecker you’ve got?  MATTSON. I’m just really excited about the future.  LOGAN. So am I. MATTSON. Yeah, but… are you?  LOGAN. Well, that’s something you say, isn’t it. [Beat] No, but I am excited. 

Logan’s never met this guy before - so he  comes out of the gate with his typical earthy, disarming directness. This seems to surprise Mattson, so Logan lowers the intensity a few notches, half-apologizes and gets a little vulnerable. “Oh I’m old.” Brings up a safer subject (the house), framed as a joke. But Mattson clarifies that he likes the first approach. Logan agrees with him about things being boring, follows up Mattson’s flattery with some self-aware (joking) flattery of his own, then agrees with him about the future, acknowledges Mattson’s doubts, and… ultimately agrees with him about everything.

This is classic Badger secondary mirroring. As Logan says, “I can handle people.” He’s not a good improviser, he tends to crack a little when he’s taken off-guard. And in terms of a Bird secondary… it’s almost as if Logan doesn’t believe in outside data or facts. He means it very literally when he says “You create your own reality.” As far as he is concerned, everything is up for negotiation. 

I went into this sorting thinking that we’d be dealing with maybe an Exploded Snake or a Fay Lion, but working it all out… no, I think Logan Roy is a Double Badger. One with Exploded, controlling, authoritarian tendencies... but a Double Badger nonetheless.

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I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

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PARIS WAS NOT NAMED AFTER PARIS HILTON YOU DIPSHIT

source?

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Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

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What do you think of the double standard between How Regulus is treated vs Draco?

I saw a few who believe that it’s hypocritical and strange Rowling treated Regulus as redeemed even though he was technically worse than Draco.

Regulus Actually made a shrine to Voldemort while he was active, and neither of his parents were death eaters. Regulus seemed to actively seek him out and only defected because Voldemort was mean to Kreacher or he thought a Horcrux was too far.

While Draco only enjoyed the stories his parents told him while Voldemort was gone, his parents actually were death eaters and Voldemort was the one who went to him and ordered/threatened him into working for him. He defected because he actually felt bad about the evil actions that he didn’t know much about when he was younger.

Truly, the biggest sin Draco commits is surviving the book.

JKR has sort of a thing about death (and/or willingness to die) being inherently redemptive and noble. There is a reason the climax of Book 7 revolves around Harry "Master of Death" Potter martyring himself. Then the epilogue revolves around Harry's sons... named for a string of men who did some pretty not-great things... but y'know, they all had noble sacrificial deaths, so they're cool. According to JKR, Voldemort's main problem is that he doesn't want to die. In the Harry Potter books, death - and especially the right kind of death - purifies you.

So Regulus dies stealing a horcrux and protecting a house elf. And Draco... doesn't.

I've thought quite a bit about the scene in Malfoy Manor, because to be perfectly honest, the framing is so all over the place that I'm not sure how I'm supposed to read it. Because I would have said that Draco buying Harry time with "I can’t — I can’t be sure,” is an effective and brave example of passive resistance. You'd think it would represent some sort of turning point... except no, Draco spends the rest of the book with no agency, needing to be saved multiple times by Harry. He ends the book unimportant, and mildly pathetic (with his receding hairline.)

I think the intention was to have the Malfoy Manor scene read as a sort of symbolic castration. Draco loses his wand, just like his father - (and oh boy is Lucius' loss of a wand treated as a castration.) We learn later that Draco lost not only his wand, but the Elder wand as well, and then to top things off... Dobby shows up to free the prisoners for him, and Dobby's the one with the noble, heroic death.

It might even be a deliberate flip of what happened with Regulus. Regulus dies destroying horcruxes and sacrificing himself for a house elf. Draco survives preventing horcruxes from being destroyed (at least, he's letting the sword that destroys horcruxes be taken away from Harry.) And then he lets a house-elf die doing the job that (narratively) he was supposed to so. Freeing Harry & Friends, dying in the process.

When it comes to Regulus himself... @saintsenara has written this fantastic analysis, and specifically about how he functions as both a Draco parallel and a Snape parallel at different times, and I absolutely could not say it better.

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Feel free to ignore if you don't answer people's doubts about shc but:-

What exactly is the difference between lion primary making decisions based on their internal moral compass and bird primaries based on external sources?? Using the shc quiz's example of "everyone else tells you to make decision a, but you do decision b." A lion primary would feel proud, and a bird would feel guilty.

But who is "everyone" in this scenario? My friends and family? More "objective" sources? While I don't think making decisions solely based on gut feelings is wrong exactly, it isn't always correct. At the same time, many external sources labelled as "objective" can be very biased. Neither is a perfect way of making decisions. I'd say some combo of both is best. Ideally you take in info from verified (by others and yourself) sources, then make your decision based on practicality and your moral principles.

Anyways ,isn't your "internal" moral compass just the sun total of ideas you've absorbed over your lifetime? Whether you agree with the morals held up as valuable by those around you or not, they still influence your "gut feelings" immensely. "Gut feelings" are really just heuristics; the patterns you recognize from previous experiences. So aren't they the same in the end?

Again, I'm not sure if you answer doubts so feel free to ignore.

Of course I do, I love questions like this.

So of course you're right. Lions and Birds are both "external" in the sense that they get information from outside themselves - I mean, that is where information comes from. Lions aren't *psychic.* Lions and Birds can also be equally, massively *wrong.*

The difference is in the way they pick up and process information. To throw some words around, Lions absorb things more through pathos/their unconscious mind. The "realest real" is their internal experience (so, more of a Plato perspective.) A Bird absorbs things through their logos/conscious mind. The "realest real" is their external situation (more of an Aristotle perspective.) Obviously Birds still have "gut feelings" and Lions still have logical observation... and ideally those those two things will always be in harmony. But if they're not... if you are forced to lean on one, which piece of data you feel better/safer/more moral using?

That's what the test is getting at with the "everyone else tells you to make decision a, but you do decision b [because it feels right]" question. A Bird is going to feel.... anxious, like they didn't have enough time to make an informed decision, like they must be missing something. A Lion is going to be more chill. There must be a reason B "felt right," and even if they can't articulate it right now, that's okay.

There a lot of "tells" that help me tell a Lion from a Bird. Birds are able to articulate, explain, and back up their positions (they also usually enjoy doing this.) But a Lion will often be surprised that they care so much about something, their Causes sneak up on them. It's messier and more emotional when they pivot, and they do this thing where they... sort of change their mind on a lag? Like Lions will do something, feel the feelings it generates... and only then realize that no, I can't do this anymore. I love this bit from Les Miserables:

The thing is - and it's a strange phenomenon (...) - in stealing money from that child [Jean Valjean] had done something he was already no longer capable of. (...) this final bad deed had a decisive effect on him, it suddenly pierced through the chaos in his mind and cleared it.

Bird causes are usually interrelated, while Lion causes are more chaotic and random. Lions are honestly fine making snap decisions, but Birds hate it. Birds are more vulnerable to gaslighting, while Lions are more vulnerable to scams that play on their emotions and cause them to panic. Birds are more likely to get into conspiracy theories, Lions are more likely to get into the occult. Birds especially hate hypocrites. Lions are more bothered by people who are pretentious and holier-than-thou. Birds have this interesting quirk where they think of their "past selves" as essentially different people, while a Lion is more likely to angst about finding their "true authentic self." A young Lion probably had some version of the "chosen one" fantasy, and I've heard several versions of the young Bird "book" fantasy (ie - I wish I had a book that told me the correct thing to do at all times.)

You can often spot a fictional Bird because their Truth/their System lives outside them: it's their job, their religion, their code of ethics. A lot of the time it'll be a literal list of rules that they made for themselves. Fictional Lions are often coded a little magical, someone with really good "street smarts" or instincts. Or like, literally a jedi. But as with everything, the reality is more complicated and nuanced.

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behind every late diagnosed neurodivergent person is a parent who has absolutely nothing going on at all don't worry about it

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Remus and Harry from chapter 14 of PoA

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I made this so now all y'all have to look at it.

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ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

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guide to potions and ingredients

I don't think I've ever shared this here, but many years ago I created an extremely exhaustive guide to potions and ingredients in the Harry Potter canon, also based heavily on real-world knowledge and history of herbalism.

I use it as a reference all the time so I thought it might be useful! In the interest of completeness I also included stuff that's only vaguely canon (from video games etc) but since it was made so long ago it doesn't include information from the FB films, Cursed Child, Hogwarts Legacy or the mobile game lol. But it's very very exhaustive and detailed haha, much more than the wiki if I do say so myself.

It's split into first a list of potions (many of which include relevant historical information, probable ingredients, and even brewing instructions where those exist) and then a list of ingredients (also with discussion of real-world applications/significance of those ingredients.)

It's designed so you can easily invent your own potions for fic-writing purposes or make a more educated guess as to the ingredients of potions that exist in canon, rather than a hard-and-fast guide to what is or isn't canon. Basically you don't have to follow the information exactly haha, it's just a guide. If you look at the ingredients of potions that we do see in canon, they usually make complete sense with the purpose of the potion and have obviously been well researched.

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draco malfoy: ‘what i want’ world tour

inspired by the fic Star Quality by who_la_hoop on AO3

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There are a fair few faux feminist statements I hate, but “We are the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” is one of them.

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How do you think Sirius reacted to Regulus’ death? Considering how he went into a full-blown murderous rage after the Potters’ deaths and Harry being taken from him (despite initially focusing on protecting Harry), do you think he would have kept his emotions about his brother locked away, or would hidden rage have surfaced? Not necessarily to the extent of hurting someone, but perhaps in a way where he might have lashed out in his grief, smashing things or losing control for a moment

So , I think Sirius hyper-focused on finding out what happened to Regulus and probably withdrew in the same way he does in OoTP. He is almost entirely correct about what happens he just missed out the bit about the horcrux (in that he correctly guesses that Regulus defected in some way) so I think he gave alot of quite obsessed thought to it. I also find the way he minimises Regulus’s involvement with the deatheaters (stupid idiot) to be an indication of some complex grief.

His reaction to Regulus’ death likely did involve deep, intense grief, which he probably hid from people.

Also I read Regulus as entirely suicidal when he went to the cave. In much the same way, I read Sirius’ pursuit of Peter as driven by a similar suicidal impulse. Both brothers were consumed by a need to go out in a blaze of glory when they felt they had nothing left to lose while also damaging their enemies in the process.