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#and so many more animals down there that we don't even KNOW about!!!!
inseasofgreen · 2 days
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OK color me intrigued; what is this with dragon bonding and what are other dragon related rituals we may know regarding Zemorri and Indiss?
So first I'm going to explain who the Zrato are. I've name dropped them a lot but I don't think I've ever gone into too much detail. Actually I might do another lore drop today about them and their counterpart The Irayo. But I digress-
The Zrato is a race that actually has dragon blood in them, sometimes there are even draconic feature's that manifest from it. They aren't born with them, but many Zrato will develop them around puberty. One of them being scales appearing on the skin, which is something Zemorri actually has. Or horns, though that once can quickly lead to health issues once they start to appear and most times are shaved off if the person survives them growing in.
The Zrato where created by blood magic, but I'll go more in detail with that in said lore dump as the main focus here is dragon bonds.
Dragon bonding isn't something all Zrato do. It's typically done by the crown's dragon riders so they can commune with their dragons. Once the bond is in place, it can't be broken unless the dragon breaks it.
Zrato can form the dragon bond by blood magic, which takes someone who knows the ritual and can help preform it. The first step, find a dragon that will let said Zrato bond to it. Second step, blood meat, or bread if your Zemorri. Which basically is the Zrato mixing their own blood with that of a sacrificial lamb. The lamb, or really any enticing animal for the dragon, is killed before the Dragon. Then the Zrato then slices their hand and let's the bloods mix. Third Step, say a fancy prayer over the now said lamb and let the dragon eat it. Nine times out of ten a bond is formed.
All that being said, Zemorri actually never did that with Indiss. Nine year old Zemorri knew the basics of the ritual, food for the dragon, blood magic, the dragon is yours. Which he actually the blood part right, or close enough as he could. Zemorri sliced his hand and soaked a loaf of bread he stole from the kitchen's while visiting his mother's family home. He then marched up to Indiss, who himself was quite young at the time and offered the bread. Indiss didn't eat the bread, rude, but Indiss himself formed the bond between him and Zemorri.
Yes, you read that right. Dragon's can break and form bonds at whim. Dragons are a mysterious creatures, they possess magic of their own. Though that magic remains a mystery that the Zrato have yet to really figure out.
As mentioned before, most Zrato don't go that far. Not only does it make it nearly impossible for other's to ride the dragon, many might not be able to afford to pay someone to perform the ritual. Dragon's are often shared by whole families, and passed down like family heirlooms until the dragon passes away, or is stolen.
The only other big ritual I could share is the birth of the Zrato, but I'll do that in a separate lore dump.
Thank you for the ask!! I'm always looking for reasons to give all the dragon lore lol
Going to tag the POTO tag list as well.
@lord-fallen @inkingfireplace @rhikasa @leahnardo-da-veggie @satohqbanana
@real-fragments @the-inkwell-variable @tildeathiwillwrite @fromthenortheast @heycerulean
@sonnetery @wyked-ao3
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bugmistake · 4 months
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thinking about marine life and getting so excited i have to remind myself to breathe
#EEEEE I LOVE IT SOOO MUCH!!!!!#like bouncing up and down in my seat. tapping my foot like thumper (from bambi)#LIKE ITS JUST SO SO SO BEAUTIFUL I FEEL LIKE A CRAZY PERSON ABOUT IT#can i show you this article about hagfish slime i've been dying to talk about this article about hagfish slime#i read it on a study break like mid-last year and i'm still like.#HIT ME WITH IT AGAIN YESSSS TELL ME ABOUT THE STRUCTURE OF THE PROTEINSSSSSS#god. god. i know that not everyone is autistic about marine life but i'm still like. how is everyone else not bursting at the seams#with love and adoration and passion and hunger for knowledge about something so beautiful and mysterious!!!!!!!!!#i just!!!! oh God there's so much LIFE. there's so much LIFE in the WATER!!!!#there's a pod of orca whose older females teach younger females how to temporarily beach themselves to hunt the seals that live there.#is that not incredible. aren't comb jellies so beautiful. aren't whale falls so beautiful.#aren't sponges so beautiful. aren't lungfish so beautiful.#aren't sharks so beautiful. isn't kelp so beautiful.#aren't eels so beautiful. aren't manta rays so beautiful. aren't sunfish so beautiful.#aren't deep sea creatures so beautiful.#isn't it so beautiful that even. god i'm tearing up isn't it so beautiful#that even deep deep in the darkest parts of the sea where there's barely any food and barely any oxygen#and there's incredible pressure bearing down on their bodies from every angle. isn't it incredible#how much life is down there. swimming and hunting and living and evolving.#lying in wait and striking and descending upon a whale fall.#scavenging and surviving and even then! there's so much we don't know about them#and so many more animals down there that we don't even KNOW about!!!!#isn't that incredible/???? the amount of things we don't know and how they're still down there anyways. god. what a planet what a life
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sortanonymous · 4 months
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Wait, they're making another one? Oh-kaaayyyy... Not holding my breath, but hopefully it's at least better than the $h!tshow that was the second movie. (Even if that "version" of Silver is still there.) If it's any consolation, I don't know how much Sega is involved with the Sonic movies, but if it's a good bit, then maybe they can help out! At the very least, there's this amazing comment under the reveal teaser. (GOLDEN ISLAND MENTIONED)
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#angry birds#angry birds movie#the angry birds movie#angry birds movie 3#the angry birds movie 3#am i the first one to tag that?#just hoping it's anywhere near as solid as the first and not the dumb unfocused slop that is the second#but seriously please don't drag silver back into this you massacred my favorite adopted piggy-turned-bird enough last time#maybe they could finally do something cool with jo like they've deserved for the past year?#then again it's likely an average-tier animated kids movie so they may not dare include a non-binary character#(then again spa's involved and spider-gwen is at least 80% likely to be trans...#...so maybe there's still hope for jo to finally get to be more than a pfp for a month)#(then again sony wants to play with ai soon so yikes)#yeah i'm still bitter that they're continuing a movie series that got killed five years ago instead of continuing better stuff#like c'mon we get an angry birds movie 3 before angry birds stella season 3 or even toons season 4?#hopefully they actually use the darn slingshots (the absence of which was one of many things that sunk the 2nd movie)#i don't know what to make of angry birds anymore considering how they murdered their renaissance before it could ever begin#(shortening and delisting the remake. making reloaded apple-exclusive. whatever on earth bad piggies 2 was.)#but i'm just hoping they can get at least one thing right this decade. just one please.#being an angry birds since 2012 and witnessing everything go to hell from 2015 onward...#...really was the perfect preparation for being a bengals fan wasn't it#welp forget everything i said about studios earlier#sega is absolutely producing it and the animation will be done by dneg who animated freaking nimona#okay NOW this just got very interesting. now i'm keeping an eye out on this.#(seriously i know dneg didn't do the most on nimona but still.#a studio involved in nimona an angry birds movie.#that combo of words alone might make my day! 2012 sorta and modern sorta would be hugging jumping up and down at that!)
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sskk-manifesto · 2 months
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#Fifteen episode 2. Mmmmmmhhhhhh#The animation quality DOES get worse. This episode shows it lol#So many static frames stretching for so long... I feel so sorry for the animators.#I still stand by the fact that if studios can't provide enough budget or time to their animators seasons simply shouldn't be released.#But after all who am I to talk...#The scene of Dazai shooting at the soldier makes my blood freeze. Rimbaud throwing books in the fire is equally upsetting#Like I /know/ it's an anime about literature with constant metafiction references–#and that this too has a symbolic meaning and is *supposed* to be upsetting but that said.#Seeing whole books being thrown in the fire is such a disturbing sight that calls for such a visceral response in me 😭😭😭#The amv opening is nice! Makes me even more bitter about season 5 one lmao. Of the kind#“not only we had to get a amv opening (((while we deserved a wholly ss/kk focused opening)))‚ we even got a bad amv ending at that”#Mmmmhhhh I hateeeeeee how they handled the Sheep 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 Seriously this is just another bug instance of#“me and the author have WHOLLY different views of what human nature is like”#I just... Don't think... Children joining together in an hostile environment would act like that. I'm so much more of a t/pn kind of guy.#Children who come together to survive would protect each other and especially would trust each other. Why is there such a big lack of trust#Why doesn't Shirase trust Chuuya? Why doesn't Chuuya trust Shirase (with handling more information)? It's just dumb#It's dumb. It sounds stupid from the very plot aspect that Chuuya would act so shady and suspicious with the Sheep instead of being open–#about what his course of action is. It's like he was trying to have them turn on him. It's stupid of Shirase to mistrust Chuuya–#when in eight years he never gave them any reason to doubt of him.#And I know right as I'm writing this that someone is going to read it and think “you're completely missing on the unbalance of power that–#creates these dynamics of lack of trust” but the thing is exactly that I don't see why that unbalance of power would ever come to be!#They're all just kids. They're aware of that. If Chuuya never had malicious intentions towards Shirase‚ I don't see why he would ever fear–#his betrayal. Likewise‚ I don't see why Shirase and the other Sheep members would ever be so manipulative and disrespectful towards–#Chuuya if he's been nothing but kind to them (and we have no reason to think otherwise)?#It all comes down to: I think people are inherently good and willing to help each other. The author thinks not lmao. It is what it is#But I wish you could see t/pn. Where kids are constantly trying to outwit each other in order to OUT-SACRIFICE THEMSELVES for the others lo#I love t/pn it's my life... I miss it#random rambles#And if anyone would like to argue that Dazai specifically set them off to betray each other... Yes I DO understand that's what the story–#is suggesting. I just don't think Dazai - for how good. and infallible he is - is enough to scrape long-term relationships of trust.
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thrivingisthegoal · 7 months
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Golf Courses ARE Being Converted
The Solarpunk "fantasy" that so many of us tout as a dream vision, converting golf courses into ecological wonderlands, is being implemented across the USA according to this NYT article!
The article covers courses in Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, and New York that are being bought and turned into habitat and hiking trails.
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The article goes more into detail about how sand traps are being turned into sand boxes for kids, endangered local species are being planted, rocks for owl habitat are being installed, and that as these courses become wilder, they are creating more areas for biodiversity to thrive.
Most of the courses in transition are being bought by Local Land Trusts. Apparently the supply of golf courses in the USA is way over the demand, and many have been shut down since the early 2000s. While many are bought up and paved over, land Trusts have been able to buy several and turn them into what the communities want: public areas for people and wildlife. It does make a point to say that not every hold course location lends itself well to habitat for animals (but that doesn't mean it wouldn't make great housing!)
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So lets be excited by the fact that people we don't even know about are working on the solutions we love to see! Turning a private space that needs thousands of gallons of water and fertilizer into an ecologically oriented public space is the future I want to see! I can say when I used to work in water conservation, we were getting a lot of clients that were golf courses that were interested in cutting their resource input, and they ended up planting a lot of natives! So even the golf courses that still operate could be making an effort.
So what I'd encourage you to do is see if there's any land or community trusts in your area, and see if you can get involved! Maybe even look into how to start one in your community! Through land trusts it's not always golf course conversions, but community gardens, solar fields, disaster adaptation, or low cost housing! (Here's a link to the first locator I found, but that doesn't mean if something isn't on here it doesn't exist in your area, do some digging!)
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thegempage · 7 months
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on one hand, i really enjoy poll for initiative: bedlam* and would love to get more people into it, if at the very least as a VOD watch to enjoy the story
on the other, today while i was in the shower i had the image of a tiktok screenshot of someone saying that adding cassandra was clearly pandering and that they shouldn't be so loudly in love pop into my head and it was a goddamn horror story
*mostly only specified bcus eventually act 5 will come out and i have my suspicions that act 5 will be the last one and thus the second season will begin... eventually
#little rock.txt#i genuinely don't know where the idea came from#i think i was just thinking about the fact that pfi is the first fandom i've been in that's wlw focused since steven universe#and steven universe was the *first* even fandom that was like that (^:#(i mean. i'll admit that tfr is also kind of like that#but that's more of a side effect of the only canon couple being stacy and becky and the shipping culture being very quiet)#(and while in pfi there also just Aren't many men to ship#there's something so delightful about how fully we get into lys/cass that echoes the way ships are treated in larger fandoms)#and how much of a breath of fresh air it is#i'm writing a happy fic about them bcus almost every other pfi fic that exists is sad as hell#(tbf. mostly my fault)#and i'm just diving headfirst into it. giving myself everything my little lesbian heart desires#it's intimate and a little cheesy and drawn out bcus that's what I want and i don't have to compete!! everyone is down for that!!#and like. i'm not blaming people who ship mlm ships.#that is a whole other beast that i'm not about to open a can of worms for#but like. listen. i've been a homestuck#i was into a handful of animes#i'm watching what's happening to dungeon meshi in real time#sitting here in my corner and knowing that my lys/cass fic doesn't have to outpace. idk fucking merlin/varrick. to get recognition#takes a weight off of the shoulders!!#..... eventually i do kinda want to write something about merlin and varrick but that's more bcus they definitely have a History#and i'm interested in what it looks like to love people even when they have become intent on destroying their own legacy#merlin defended varrick to his last breath and it compels me!!#however i think that's something for after pfi: bedlam is over and i can cope enough with the inevitable emotional devastation to rewatch i
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sunderwight · 3 months
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Headcanon that Shen Yuan was hotter than Shen Qingqiu, actually.
Like yeah SQQ being a cultivator gave him a boost to enough attributes + being in a stallion novel where everyone is either unrealistic hot or dog's butt ugly got the Shen Qingqiu body extra points, and he wasn't bad looking to begin with. Plus not being ill is vastly more important to the new Shen Qingqiu than those extra hotness points (Without a Cure notwithstanding). But part of the reason why he's kind of like, meh, at least I'm not hideous or anything, is because Shen Yuan's original body was a knock out.
I also like him as chronically ill, and, as many people know, beauty standards and sustained suffering are not as incompatible as they should be. Shen Yuan was conventionally attractive in part because conventional beauty standards seem to want everyone slowly dying all the time. But even setting that aside, the man had flawless bone structure, an appealing figure, captivating eyes, and the kind of voice that stopped people in their tracks.
All of which was a contributing factor to his antisocial lifestyle, actually. Despite the fact that Shen Yuan does enjoy company and requires a certain baseline of social enrichment for his enclosure, his internalized homophobia and closeting did not play well with overtures from interested parties (regardless of gender). The only way to minimize the odds of him being asked out on dates was to essentially become a shut-in, especially since even Shen Yuan can only make so many excuses before he himself starts to notice that he's going to a lot of effort to avoid specifically that avenue of socialization. Far better to just remove himself from any risk of it, and then vocally lament that oh no he's just too much of a nerd to get anywhere with women!
Anyway this largely doesn't matter much outside of sheer comedy potential for any situation where SY gets his old body/life back. Like imagine a reveal scenario where the System is going to transport them back to their old lives.
Shang Qinghua: well bro I guess this is gonna be the ultimate test of love, right?
Shen Yuan: what do you mean?
Shang Qinghua: our husbands are gonna see what we looked like back before we were glorious cultivators! they're going to have to track us down in our mundane, kinda shitty pre-transmigration lives! it's gonna be at least a little embarrassing, right?
Shen Yuan: *gets his old body back*
Shang Qinghua, normal human with average looks: ...
Shen Yuan, exemplary 11/10: ?
Shang Qinghua: what. the fuck?? bro what the fuck why are you hot???
Shen Yuan: don't make it weird
Shang Qinghua: make it weird??? why were you sitting at home reading my shitty novel when you could have been out there building your own harem???
Shen Yuan: stop exaggerating
Shang Qinghua: oh my god you've always been like this. this is it, isn't it? it wasn't even brain damage from the transmigration or something--
Shen Yuan: hey
Shang Qinghua: --you've just always been completely unaware, haven't you? every time I wrote a beautiful woman who didn't know her own appeal you'd be jumping down my throat--
Shen Yuan: because that's a stupid trope--!
Shang Qinghua: --JUMPING DOWN MY THROAT EXACTLY LIKE THAT but this whole time THIS WHOLE TIME it wasn't even a glow-up issue, you've just been that, personified, yourself--
Shen Yuan: look I know I'm not ugly but I'm not I'm hardly that good-looking
Shang Qinghua: YOU ARE NEVER ALLOWED TO CRITICIZE THAT TROPE AGAIN! oh my god. how many broken hearts did you leave behind when you died?!
Shen Yuan: none, I wasn't even seeing anyone--
Shang Qinghua: yeah full offense but I am nottt taking your word for that. I bet you had a harem you didn't know about in this lifetime too. I bet you had a fan club, like an anime prince
Shen Yuan: *mumbling*
Shang Qinghua: what was that?
Shen Yuan: I said... only in high school...
Shang Qinghua: oh my god
Shen Yuan: it wasn't a big deal!
Shang Qinghua: *frantically trying to see if he can find any trace of it on the internet now*
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pseudowho · 4 months
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"You know, Nanamin," Yuuji started, between mouthfuls, "when we first met, I thought I wouldn't like you at all."
Kento raised one thin eyebrow over the rim of his paper-cup coffee. He sat with you, and Yuuji, at a dirt road Conbini overlooking Tokyo. The sun was setting, casting the city as a silhouette against oranges, purples. You could smell the earthy petrichor of an incoming storm. Yuuji did not mind, thoughtful as he slurped at an instant ramen.
"Like, really," Yuuji continued, his mouth puckered up, "I thought you were boring. Unfunny, grumpy, miserable. Maybe even a little bit mean." Yuuji laughed now, becoming gradually more animated as he set the scene. "And when you tried to lecture me, while I was fighting that curse? Insane. I was like, 'Who the hell is this guy?'"
You covered your mouth, hiding a smile, eyes flicking between your unreadable husband, and the bubbling boy opposite him. Yuuji finished laughing, wiping his eyes and sighing into another slurp of noodles.
You placed a surreptitious hand on Kento's thigh under the table, and he barely reacted, but to tense and cross his arms. Yuuji rested his chin on one hand, eyes softening as he looked over the ant-like lights, moving in scattered formation across the city.
"But then...I realised. You just cared. I mean, really cared. About me. And if I wasn't being treated right. And if I was gonna be okay." Yuuji swallowed, his voice thickening. "And I...didn't have anyone left like that. The only person I ever did have was my grandad, and maybe he just took care of me because he had to, y'know? But you chose to. Even though I'm...I'm a monster."
You saw Kento squirm within. You knew he'd had his misgivings about Sukuna's Vessel, before Kento knew him as Yuuji. You knew the shame and guilt Kento carried for that. His shoulders ached, a pall-bearer of emotions for so many.
"And you're hilarious. Anyone can see it, really. And you're a rebel. And a protester. And you stand up for the little guy when nobody else wants to. And you don't do it to make us like you. You just...believe it's right. And don't get me wrong, I like Gojo-sensei too, but I love you."
You pursed your lips, closing your eyes and trying not to tear up on Kento's behalf. Kento remained silent, arms crossed and frowning down at his steaming coffee. Yuuji looked at you, uncertain. You gently flapped one hand; don't worry, you're alright, you're okay.
Kento eventually broke his silence, his voice gruff. He pushed his bank card across the table to Yuuji.
"Itadori-kun." Yuuji sat to attention, wide-eyed. "Go and get yourself some snacks. As much as you like. And the other students, too, if you know what they'd want."
Yuuji took the card in confusion, with both hands and a little bow, and disappeared inside the shop, the automatic doors booping behind him.
Kento stood, your hand falling off his lap, and grasped the metal railings overlooking the city, with his back to you. His shoulders were taut, stiff, occasionally hitching with emotion. You felt him, as you always had.
"...Kento? Are you alright?"
A thick swallow and a sniffle before a single gravelly, "Yeah. I'm fine, I...I'm fine."
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beggars-opera · 2 months
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On the road leading into the center of Concord, Massachusetts, there sits a house.
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It is a plain, colonial-style house, of which there are many along this road. It has sea green and buff paint, a historical plaque, and one of the most multi-layered stories I have ever encountered to showcase that history is continuous, complicated, and most importantly, fragmentary, unless you know where to look.
So, where to start? The plaque.
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There's some usual information here: Benjamin Barron built the house in 1716, and years later it was a "witness house" to the start of the American Revolution. And then, something unusual: a note about an enslaved man named John Jack whose epitaph is "world famous."
Where is this epitaph? Right around the corner in the town center.
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It reads:
God wills us free; man wills us slaves. I will as God wills; God’s will be done. Here lies the body of JOHN JACK a native of Africa who died March 1773 aged about 60 years Tho’ born in a land of slavery, He was born free. Tho’ he lived in a land of liberty, He lived a slave. Till by his honest, tho’ stolen labors, He acquired the source of slavery, Which gave him his freedom; Tho’ not long before Death, the grand tyrant Gave him his final emancipation, And set him on a footing with kings. Tho’ a slave to vice, He practised those virtues Without which kings are but slaves.
We don't know precisely when the man first known only as Jack was purchased by Benjamin Barron. We do know that he, along with an enslaved woman named Violet, were listed in Barron's estate upon his death in 1754. Assuming his gravestone is accurate, at that time Jack would have been about 40 and had apparently learned the shoemaking trade from his enslaver. With his "honest, though stolen labors" he was then able to earn enough money to eventually purchase his freedom from the remaining Barron family and change his name to John, keeping Jack as a last name rather than using his enslaver's.
John Jack died, poor but free, in 1773, just two years before the Revolutionary War started. Presumably as part of setting up his own estate, he became a client of local lawyer Daniel Bliss, brother-in-law to the minister, William Emerson. Bliss and Emerson were in a massive family feud that spilled into the rest of the town, as Bliss was notoriously loyal to the crown, eventually letting British soldiers stay in his home and giving them information about Patriot activities.
Daniel Bliss also had abolitionist leanings. And after hearing John's story, he was angry.
Here was a man who had been kidnapped from his home country, dragged across the ocean, and treated as an animal for decades. Countless others were being brutalized in the same way, in the same town that claimed to love liberty and freedom. Reverend Emerson railed against the British government from the pulpit, and he himself was an enslaver.
It wouldn't do. John Jack deserved so much more. So, when he died, Bliss personally paid for a large gravestone and wrote its epitaph to blast the town's hypocrisy from the top of Burial Hill. When the British soldiers trudged through the cemetery on April 19th, 1775, they were so struck that they wrote the words down and published them in the British newspapers, and that hypocrisy passed around Europe as well. And the stone is still there today.
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You know whose stone doesn't survive in the burial ground?
Benjamin Barron's.
Or any of his family that I know of. Which is absolutely astonishing, because this story is about to get even more complicated.
Benjamin Barron was a middle-class shoemaker in a suburb that wouldn't become famous until decades after his death. He lived a simple life only made possible by chattel slavery, and he will never show up in a U.S. history textbook.
But he had a wife, and a family. His widow, Betty Barron, from whom John purchased his freedom, whose name does not appear on her home's plaque or anywhere else in town, does appear either by name or in passing in every single one of those textbooks.
Terrible colonial spelling of all names in their marriage record aside, you may have heard her maiden name before:
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Betty Parris was born into a slaveholding family in 1683, in a time when it was fairly common for not only Black, but also Indigenous people to be enslaved. It was also a time of war, religious extremism, and severe paranoia in a pre-scientific frontier. And so it was that at the age of nine, Betty pointed a finger at the Arawak woman enslaved in her Salem home, named Titibe, and accused her of witchcraft.
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Yes, that Betty Parris.
Her accusations may have started the Salem Witch trials, but unlike her peers, she did not stay in the action for long. As a minor, she was not allowed to testify at court, and as the minister's daughter, she was too high-profile to be allowed near the courtroom circus. Betty's parents sent her to live with relatives during the proceedings, at which point her "bewitchment" was cured, though we're still unsure if she had psychosomatic problems solved by being away from stress, if she stopped because the public stopped listening, or if she stopped because she no longer had adults prompting her.
Following the witch hysteria, the Parrises moved several times as her infamous father struggled to hold down a job and deal with his family's reputation. Eventually they landed in Concord, where Betty met Benjamin and married him at the age of 26, presumably having had no more encounters with Satan in the preceding seventeen years. She lived an undocumented life and died, obscure and forgotten, in 1760, just five years before the Stamp Act crisis plunged America into a revolution, a living bridge between the old world and the new.
I often wonder how much Betty's story followed her throughout her life. People must have talked. Did they whisper in the town square, "Do you know what she did when she was a girl?" Did John Jack hear the stories of how she had previously treated the enslaved people in her life? Did that hasten his desperation to get out? And what of Daniel Bliss; did he know this history as well, seeing the double indignity of it all? Did he stop and think about how much in the world had changed in less than a century since his neighbor was born?
We'll never know.
All that's left is a gravestone, and a house with an insufficient plaque.
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blackpearlblast · 10 months
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[ID: drawings of a golem animated by a palestinian flag painted on its forehead. it is seen: holding out its arms protectively in front of a crowd of children, the children also hold each other supportively; catching an air strike missile from the air and throwing it away or crushing it in its fist; turning its back so that a child can warm her hands by the earth oven built into its back, food in a pot is cooking on the fire and a boy holds a cup of steaming tea to his face and enjoys the aroma; clearing away rubble so a man can help up his wife who was buried underneath, she is clutching a baby to her chest; stooping down to look at a kitten a young boy is holding up to show it; and dissolving small flakes of clay from its finger into a glass of water, purifying it. end ID]
@fairuzfan asked people to create and share art for the strike. i wrote an artist statement and then set about trying to draw what i envisioned. artist statement below.
This golem is a protector that I wish I could gift to the children and adults in Gaza. The flag on its forehead is to show that love for the Palestinian people is an animating force for people fighting for a free Palestine all over the world, especially for those in Palestine who are trying to free themselves and their people. Love is the motivation for the call for a free Palestine, not hatred like people try to claim. It is very strong and fast and can catch air strikes out of midair and crush them to dust or throw them back in the direction they came from. It can lift all the rubble of a collapsed building very quickly so nobody can get trapped underneath. It has an earth oven in its back with an ever-burning flame that people can use to warm themselves and cook food and heat water to use to bathe themselves or make tea. Pieces of its clay can be crumbled up and mixed into water to make even the most brackish and unclean water pure and safe to drink.
The golem is always a bit of a tragic figure so I don't imagine it staying around forever once Palestine is free and it is no longer needed. I think it would use its great strength to help rebuild the destroyed houses, churches, schools, universities, hospitals, and mosques and then dive into the Jordan river and dissolve. It would clean the river of all pollution and make the water splash up over all the newly replanted fruit trees, causing them to grow big and strong. Its love for Palestine and its people can be tasted in the fruit they grow for generations.
I choose a specifically Jewish icon of protection because of how it feels to witness such horrors done in the supposed name of Judaism and the Jewish people. For many anti-zionist Jews, we feel like we are acting directly within the teachings of our stories and communities by opposing this genocide. It is difficult to understand how the very people and institutions who taught us these values now fight against them so fiercely. While obviously I would still oppose Israel were I not Jewish, the way I oppose Israel is directly informed by my Jewishness. I hope that someday, somehow, Judaism can bring as much joy and support to the Palestinian people as it has brought grief and destruction. That Jewish symbols used in the name of love and justice will bear more significance than the ones used in shows of hatred. Knowing the depth of the harm caused, I do not know if this is possible. But this artwork and everything I have dedicated myself to these past few months and continue to dedicate myself to in the future is born from this hope. I love you. Thank you for being on this planet with me. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! And it will be beautiful.
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motomamita · 4 months
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fugitive!könig × naive!farmer!reader
warnings: smut, +18, no condom, innocence kink, breeding kink, baby trapping, virginity loss, female reader, dub-con!!
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fugitive!könig who managed to escape the law, after committing several crimes, and now travels throughout the country hiding his identity.
On one of his many trips he ends up arriving at a small town, almost lost in time, where its few inhabitants live off their animal farms and orchards. Apparently no one had televisions, and the few radios only broadcast music that was overshadowed by static. This ensured that no one there would be able to recognize him and gave him the opportunity to stay and rest for a few hours.
Tired of walking and extremely hungry, König sat down in a small cafe to have a drink. The people around him looked at him strangely, not only because they didn't know him but also because of his intimidating appearance. His back was broad, he had long legs, and the muscles in his arms were noticeable even though he was wearing a wind jacket that covered him. However, no one seemed to be bothered by his presence, the people there loved tourists and König seemed completely like one.
When it was time to pay, he noticed that he had ordered and consumed more than he could afford. He was about to offer some of his "camping" knives in exchange for the money he was missing until a figure approached him.
"Don't worry if you don't have the money to pay." you spoke with a sweet voice and doing everything possible so that Konig would not feel embarrassed. "I sell the fruits to the owner of the place so I'm sure I can reach an agreement with him."
König was fascinated by you. Not only because of your timely friendliness but also your very natural and almost unique appearance that was very difficult to find in other places. You were wearing a jean gardener, some comfortable shoes and you were carrying a basket that minutes ago was full of fruits and vegetables from your garden. König looked down, somewhat shy and not knowing how to react to you, the truth is that during his escape he had not met many friendly people.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you for anything in return." You smiled when you saw that no words came out of his mouth. "Here we greatly appreciate tourists and travelers, after all they are the ones who keep this small town from turning into a ghost town."
You invited König to take refuge in your small house for as long as he needed before leaving again for another place. König accepted, surprised at your remarkable naivety in letting a complete stranger into your house and providing him with all the care.
When he arrived, you showed him where the shower was and what his room would be where he could rest. You left a clean change of clothes on his bed and selflessly went off to make dinner. Once he cleaned, König followed the delicious smell and came to the kitchen where you were on your back stirring a large pot of what seemed to be a stew. You were so focused that you didn't notice the presence of the big man behind you. he thought about how easy it would be to cut your neck with one of those long knives you had there. But the idea quickly disappeared when you turned around and a wide smile formed on your face when you saw him.
That stew was the best he had tasted in a long time, so much so that he served himself 3 plates, leaving you totally pleased. The next morning, König didn't really know exactly what to do. He could stay one more night and wake up in the middle of the night to raid your entire home, even leave after having a trip with you. He was hesitant, and that hesitation turned into doubt when you offered to cut his hair and trim his long beard, which he accepted.
That same afternoon König sat down to drink a lemonade made by you while he watched you harvest super large, red strawberries from a distance. He fixed his gaze on the way your pants hugged your butt in a tempting way and how you hummed a melody quietly that he couldn't make out. A tingling appeared in König's tummy and he suddenly noticed an erection growing inside his pants. You looked so pretty, so innocent. It was obvious from afar that you didn't kill a fly and that your care for him was sincere.
The days passed and König seemed to have no intention of leaving, that didn't bother you at all. Now he helped you with the heavy work on the farm, carrying large amounts of hay on his shoulder and feeding the animals. His favorite activity was watching you milk the cows, fantasizing about your hands and the way the milk dripped from them.
His approaches to you intensified, taking advantage of the slightest opportunity to touch you or rub against you. he soon discovered that you had no idea about any sexual activity, acting confused at his double meaning words and insinuations. You were the perfect muse to fulfill all his fantasies without anyone being able to stop him.
Your parents had died a long time ago, leaving you alone in charge of the big farm and all the obligations of the adult world. That led König to think that life on that farm couldn't be bad. He knew how to handle hard work well and you did everything you could to teach him and please him. The idea of ​​starting from scratch, with you there, totally convinced him.
You were a healthy, hard-working woman and you needed someone like konig with you. But König needed to have something that would force you to keep him there with you, forever and that would confirm the mutual love that you both had to give each other. That's when he found the solution: he had to get you pregnant.
That afternoon he made a point that you wouldn't leave the stable until you were full of his cum. He started by complimenting your dress and how pretty that color looked on you. Then the caresses that increased in intensity until he managed to let you be carried away by him and his carnal desire. Now he had you under him, with your skirt up and your underwear hanging from one of your feet. Out of desperation, König only lowered his pants to his heels, even with his work boots on. You were on a large pile of hay, sweating from the great summer heat and moaning loudly.
His thrusts were brutal, making their way inside you that you barely had time to understand everything that was happening. The pleasure was so much that you could barely think about anything other than König's gaze and the way his balls slapped your ass.
"Oh, baby. You're so so tight.. And wet, shit" König groaned, sighing loudly at the pleasure your pussy was giving him. "Tell me, how did a cute little thing like you stay a virgin for so long, huh?" You opened your mouth to answer but only moans came out. "Uh? Talk to me, sweetheart, talk to me.."
"I.. I don't know.." you managed to say, overstimulated by everything. König's rough shirt rubbed against your clit, giving both pleasure and pain. König was so big that he covered you with his entire body, leaving you with almost no place to breathe air other than his breath.
"Uh? Don't you know? These farm boys are idiots... They wouldn't know how to please a pretty thing like you..." König cut off his sentence to get even closer to you and kiss you, putting his tongue inside your mouth. You tried to keep up with him but that triggered the kiss to be even wetter and hotter for him.
"König.. Give me more, please!" He smiled as he heard the urgency in your broken voice. You looked so pretty like that, almost not understanding what was happening but still pleased and eager for him to give you even more.
He, ready to please you, grabbed your legs and raised them to your shoulder, adopting a new position. His thrusts continued, his fat cock forcing its way into your no longer so virgin pussy and the simple sound of your skin slapping together made your warm walls embrace him. Not really knowing what to do, you brought your hands to König's big, muscular shoulders, feeling a few scars on them.
"Oh, my pretty little thing.. I'm going to fill you inside and you're going to be the prettiest mom in this whole damn town.." You dug your nails into his shoulder and your gaze was filled with confusion. "You like it, huh? You're going to make me so happy, isn't that what you want?"
You hesitated for a few seconds, not sure what he meant but his cock rammed even deeper into you leaving you almost without any thought. Tears formed in your eyes from the pleasure and absolute adoration with which he looked at you.
"Come on, mommy.. Make me happy, carry my precious baby.."
In the same way that König had managed to get his way in prison, he had gotten his way with you. Now you both lived together as a couple on the farm, happy and with a baby on the way inside your fertile womb.
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zooophagous · 2 years
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So why do you hate the advertising industry?
Hokay so.
Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.
I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.
I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.
Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.
Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.
Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.
I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.
And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.
Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.
Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.
And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.
Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.
It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.
It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.
And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.
Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.
Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.
However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.
I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.
Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.
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masterhallmark · 6 months
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Rant incoming
I feel like the problem with a lot of Disney's live action remakes (and arguably Wish) is they're trying to appeal to a crowd that no longer exists, namely the people who used to claim that the Disney Princesses were sexist.
All the interviews tend to include, "Well she's not chasing a MAN anymore" which...almost no one sees the princesses like that, anymore. Virtually NO ONE still believes the princesses are man-chasing sexist caricatures of women.
Cinderella is now hailed as an abuse victim who stayed strong long enough to get help to get out of her situation. Anyone who says she should have saved herself is basically regarded as a victim blamer. And it's very clear in the film she wasn't looking to marry the prince, she just wanted a night off. She was the only one who wasn't in line to meet him. She didn't find out she met the prince until he went looking for her!
Snow White is now hailed for her negotiation skills, ability to calm down after extreme stress (she had a moment of panic and had to cry for a bit, but who wouldn't after finding out The Queen hired someone to kill you?), and ability to take charge of a house of adult men. And again, she was an abuse victim, this time trying to escape ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS. While she dreamed of her prince, it was secondary to her main goal of SURVIVAL. There are also entire video essays about how Snow White gave hope to people during The Great Depression.
Everyone acknowledges that Ariel wanted to be human BEFORE meeting Eric. We all know she was a nerd hyperfixating on humans, and also standing up to her prejudiced father.
We understand Sleeping Beauty wasn't the main character, the Three Good Fairies were, AND PHILLIP WOULD NEVER HAVE BEATEN MALEFICENT WITHOUT THEM! He literally depended on them! WOMEN SAVED THE DAY! But even then, is it really such a sin for a girl to fantasize about romance and fall for someone with corny pickup lines?
We all understand Jasmine just wanted someone to treat her LIKE A PERSON. She rejected every Prince before Aladdin because they treated her like a prize. So why did they need her to want to be Sultan? How did that make her more feminist when she already wanted to be treated like an equal and have a say in her future? Is it only empowering if you want a career in politics?
We admire that Belle, despite living in a judgemental village, was kind to everyone (even though she found the village life dull), and her story teaches girls that the guy everyone else loves isn't always a good guy. What's sexist about teaching girls about red flags? And she didn't start being nice to The Beast until he started treating her with respect and kindness.
Do I really NEED to defend Mulan or Tiana? I think they speak for themselves.
Rapunzel was yet another abuse victim who just needed a little help to get out of her bad situation. In this case, she also needed to learn that she was an abuse victim, and that what Mother Gothel did WASN'T normal, much like many victims of gaslighting.
And don't get me started on the non-princess animals.
Perdita had a healthy relationship with Pongo to the point she was open to express her pregnancy fears to him, and was ready to TEAR APART Cruella's goons for daring to touch her puppies as well as adopting the other puppies. Like, she was so ferocious the goons mistook her for a hyena! She's basically that "I AM THAT GIRL'S MOTHER!" scene from SpyXFamily if Yor were a dog. She and her husband were a TEAM.....but they made a Cruella live action to turn her into a girlboss?! The literal animal abuser!? THAT'S the woman you wanted to put on a pedestal when Perdita was RIGHT THERE!?
Duchess kept her kittens calm after they had been catnapped and was classy as heck. Nice to everyone regardless of social class during a time period where that was uncommon.
Lady stood up to Tramp when she believed he had abandoned her and didn't really care about her. She found out he was a heartbreaker and was like, "Nuh uh. No. You are not doing that to me! You put me through enough."
Miss Bianca from The Rescuers was IN CHARGE the whole movie, and was willing to risk life and limb to save an innocent child. THAT TINY MOUSE TOOK ON ALLIGATORS! And she picked Bernard to accompany her because he was the only one who wasn't ogling her. And then in the sequel SHE DID IT ALL AGAIN! I wish I were as brave as her.
Like, the public haven't accused these ladies of being sexist caricatures since 2014 (Actresses and actors don't count, they're out of touch like the rest of Hollywood) yet Disney is operating under the assumption that the public still thinks that way, hence all the "sHe'S nOt AfTeR a MaN iN ThIs VeRsIOn" talk.
The live action remakes are trying to attract an audience that doesn't really exist much, anymore, and back when it did exist, was comprised mainly of people who didn't actually watch the films. The Disney princesses are no longer seen as sexist, and feminine qualities are no longer seen as weak or undesirable.
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lifetimeoftired · 1 month
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Thought more on the 'Batfam in Danny's world' stuff.
Red Robin: What is this? -holds up a clunky early 2000s device he found in Danny's room between his pinched fingers, like it might bite him- Danny: Oh, my PDA? Tucker insisted on buying it for me but honestly I'm not really that great with tech so I don't use it much. He usually follows me around trying to manage my schedule with it. Red Robin: Concerning but, more concerning, this thing... Works? Danny: It's the latest model, so it should? Red Robin: Latest... -trying not to cringe- How do you connect to the internet on it? Or take pictures? Danny, with genuine excitement: Your PDA can do that!? Man, that sounds way cooler than the plastic that lets you see all the stuff inside! Red Robin: I'm In Hell.
Spoiler: Having villains for parents is the worst right? Danny: I mean, my mom accidentally brings the food to life and it tries to bite us. But the keyword is 'accidentally'. They're mostly harmless. Spoiler: They literally just shot at you??? Danny: They shot at Phantom. They don't know it's actually me you know? Also I don't even worry about it. They don't have very good aim since I'm not a danger to them and Dad only gets badass when mom is in danger. Mom's always a badass but it's good dodging practice. Besides, I'd be more worried about them dissecting me, what with the whole, I'm technically an entirely different species that they've been studying their whole life and don't think I'm sentient anymore. But y'know it's whatever. They're not actually all that bad and I know they love me deep down. Spoiler: I'm not sure whether to borrow Hood's guns and shoot you myself or kidnap you away from here and force Batman to adopt you. Danny: Wha-
Danny: Alright a few more adjustments aaaaand there! Signal: Oh wow! Thanks! It's nuce to be able to see again without getting black spots on my vision. There's so many ghosts around it can be hard to see. Danny, biting his lip trying not to laugh: No problem. Signa;: .... What? Danny: Nothing! You look great dude! Signal: ....... Danny: ....... Signal: What did you put on my face!? Danny: Sun glasses! Signal: -skids to a halt in front of mirror and sure enough they're sun glasses. But they're triangular and the hooks go aaaall the way up to hook around the bat-ear points and look completely ridiculous- Danny Why :( Danny: -trying to say 'sorry' through his giggles, but he's not really sorry-
Danny: Uuuuh Red Hood I can't see your face, but I'm kinda worried about how many guns you're loading right now. Red Hood: I just want your 15th birthday party to be safe, okay? Danny: I'll be fine? It'd be nice if the other ghosts gave me a day off sure, but fighting them seems safer. I don't really want my mom to bake a cake anyway. Knowing her it'd just come alive so if they forget this year it's fine. I'm just, those are real guns man. They're dangerous. Red Hood: They are. -cocks gun- For Them.
Robin: >:( Danny: It was a nice try. Robin: Do not patronize me Fenton! Danny: I don't know why or how, but that sounds even more insulting than when Dash does it... Robin: This is an indignity! Fighting immortals entities that cannot be harmed by blade is one thing- but I will not accept being spoken to like a child! Skulker will return and taste my fury! Danny: Hey calm down alright? Robin: Do not test my patience! Danny: I heard you like animals. Wanna meet my purple back gorilla friend? She's really nice and is easy to talk to. Robin: .... The gorilla... doesn't speak does she? Danny: Haha no of course not! I learned her language instead. Robin: ... You are a strange man. However I will accept your proposal for now and I insist you teach me every form of communication with her.
Orphan: :( Danny, who's always been able to understand Cass perfectly, much to the mystery of the batfam and her delight: Aw Cass, I love you guys too. It's been great having your family around- and really I'm flattered! But I can't be your new brother, I'm sorry, but we do live in different realities. Besides, I think I've had enough of people trying to adopt me. Orphan: ? Danny: Yeah my godfather is a total fruitloop. Always trying to kill my dad and marry my mom who hates his guts and get me to call him father instead. Like, he even tried to clone me and copy my brain into a new body right? Or that time he rigged the election to become mayor just to mess with me. And hiring actually competent ghost hunters so I'd quit (kinda wish I could quit actually but it's fine). His obsession with me can get out of hand sometimes you see. Orphan: >:( -cracks knuckles- Danny: What? No! I don't need protecting really! I can handle him just fine. Now that I'm thinking about it though, I dunno what he'd do with Jazz. He never seems to actually talk about her beyond that one time he tried to get her to attack me- huh? Orphan: -disappeared- Danny: ...... That probably won't come back to haunt me.
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headspace-hotel · 9 months
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you know how people say "cats domesticated themselves?" I find this statement irksome because as i've been studying plants and particularly weeds, a theory has slowly been forming in my head about domestication that makes a lot more sense than other theories.
Basically, I think everything domesticated itself. Or rather, domestication involves adaptation and active participation on both sides.
Evidence for this is found in studying weed and crop plants—truth be told, most weeds are or were also crops.
Amaranthus, the genus that gives us the most costly USA agricultural weeds? All edible and healthy, and several members of the genus are domesticated. They were staple crops for Mesoamerican empires.
Kudzu, the vine so aggressive in the USA it turns trees into looming kudzu monoliths? It's been bred and cultivated by humans since the Neolithic in its native range, in China it was one of the main sources of fiber for cloth for MILLENNIA to the point that the Zhou dynasty had a whole government office of kudzu affairs. Kudzu roots are edible and they can be as tall as a human and weighing over 200 pounds, you can make them into flour, make noodles out of the flour, you can process them down into a starch and use it just like potato or tapioca starch and make all sorts of sauces and confections and stuff out of it. In Japan it was used for clothes too, if you see pictures of clothes worn by a samurai that's probably kudzu! It has loads of unresearched phytochemicals that probably have medicinal use, it's good for making paper, a researcher even made a biodegradable alternative to plastic out of it
Yellow Nutsedge is a food crop, Purslane is a food crop, at least some species of morning-glories are food crops, crabgrass is a food crop, Nettles are food AND fiber, Milkweed is food and fiber too, Broadleaf Plantain is food and medicinal, Dandelion is food and medicinal AND great companion plant (they used to sell them in seed catalogues around the 1890's or so!) and have y'all ever seen queen-anne's-lace along the side of the road? THATS CARROTS. That's the wild ancestor of carrots! (ofc don't eat anything you aren't 1000% sure you can identify)
Simply put. A weed is a plant that has co-evolved with humans. And most of them are Like That because they co-evolved with us. And honestly I reckon that many plants were domesticated in the first place because they liked to grow in disturbed environments near human settlements and agricultural fields.
Now thinking about this in terms of animals...when our domestic species were first domesticated, there weren't fences, there wasn't "inside" or any controlled environment to bring animals into, and if you tried to overpower or coerce any of those species, they would 100% just kill you. It makes a lot more sense if the humans were just following herds around, and it gradually developed into protecting those herds from predators and tending to them more intentionally until we were kind of just part of the herds ourselves.
a lot of people are familiar with Biblical stories and metaphors about shepherds...it's clear those guys were basically living with sheep 24/7. They were assimilated to the sheep lifestyle.
this theory kinda suggests that we've lost the ability to domesticate new animal species to some extent because domestication has never really involved removing an animal from its natural environment. Feeding wild animals and trying to socialize them to humans isn't in line with the mutualistic nature of domestication because it's trying to change the animal to our whims, and usually decreases the fitness of the animal rather than increases it. And domestication probably takes a long long time to reach the level where an animal can be a "pet" instead of a more distant form of domestication where the association is not as close.
EXCEPT. Animals that adapt to our environment are prime candidates for domestication. This actually checks out because rats and mice are some of the most recently domesticated animals, iirc. Basically, pest animals are the most likely to be domesticated because they've already started evolving into a relationship with us. Just like weeds.
An interesting side note is how both animals and plants can de-domesticate and become "weeds/pests" again. Like "weedy rice" is becoming a problem in some crops where rice has evolved into a weed. And with animals, there's pigeons who were domesticated by us and now their habitat is cities because they co-evolved with us.
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Fanfic Thieves on Youtube
A collection of youtube channels have been uploading preexisting fanfictions in videos with little to no credit to the original authors. These are not podfics, these channels copy-paste the fics into text-to-speech readers then upload the unaltered audio over static or unrelated backgrounds, either art that is also stolen or mobile game footage. In addition to not naming the authors, they alter the title to make it that much harder for readers to recognize or find the original uploads. Some go so far as to pretend they themselves are creating the fics in question. Many claim that their stealing actually helps give fics "exposure" despite the intentional steps they take to conceal the origins of the fics they profit off of. However, this practice has lead many authors to discontinue fics after the frustration of having their hard work stolen. Many of these channels claim they will remove videos upon request, but will either argue with the author in order to keep it up, or simply unlist the video for a time until they think the author isn't paying attention anymore. And their solution to receiving strikes against their channels in the past has been to further obfuscate the origins of their content instead of even considering asking first.
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”I got caught stealing, so instead of not stealing anymore, I’m doubling down on stealing even more so it’s harder for people to find out and prove I’m stealing. Stealing doesn't count if the specific person I stole from didn't call me out. I am the real victim.”
That, plus the incessant tag scumming in all the videos (spamming unrelated tags in order to appear in more search results) proves to me that these are lazy attention seekers who don't want to put in creative effort when they could just leech off of the passion of others.
In order to report them, go to their channel's "About" page and click the flag icon. Said icon might be behind the three dots in the top bar on mobile. Go to "Report User" at the bottom and tick the "spam and scams" button. This will allow you to list multiple videos as offenders instead of reporting them individually. Youtube's policy states that video spam constitutes:
Massively uploading content that you scraped from other creators.
Auto-generated content that computers post without regard for quality or viewer experience.
If you recognize one of your fics among the stolen, say so in the additional comments box, and perhaps call out the channel directly in the video's comments. If you recognize someone else's fic, please let the original author know so they can report the channel as well. Many have been confronted for stealing previously and refuse to admit wrongdoing.
Most of what I've found has been My Hero Academia fics since that's my fandom and those are the ones I can recognize as stolen, but there are many other channels that steal from other fandoms, so I invite anyone and everyone to reblog this with their own findings.
The reality is that this extremely low-effort content and new youtube channels are both very easy to make, so most likely they'll start new channels once the ones on this list are run through. But hopefully, if we all work together and keep whacking these moles, perhaps we can instill that same defeatism they caused so many creators who didn't deserve it, and eventually they'll give up.
My sincerest thanks to everyone who helped bring additional channels to my attention. A special thanks to ao3 user InArduisFidelis who brought the initial attention to the issue, and @owlf45 whose work was stolen.
Links under the cut.
YurikoFanfics - Not only stole content, but acted in comments as though they were the one writing these stories.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@YurikoFanfics
What-IF-Anime - Has the exact same "disclaimer" about not being the original author as the one above. Either they're the same person or the thieves are stealing from each other.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@What-IF-Anime
quirkywhatif7 - Either an alt of the above, or all these people are talking to one another because this one made a community post identical to a comment the one above made in response to being called out (the above screenshots).
https://www.youtube.com/@quirkywhatif7/about
DekuFanfic - It's the same fucking guy again.
https://www.youtube.com/@DekuFanfic/about
InfiniteParadoxfanfics - Nothing notable, same deal as the others.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@InfiniteParadoxfanfics/about
WhatIfAnimeChannel - Admits in their community posts that other people write the fics they post but still doesn't give credit. Migrated to a new channel after issues with youtube, likely being flagged previously.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIfAnimeChannel/about
WhatIfAnimeAll - Alt of above.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIfAnimeAll
FWNWorld - Makes sure to tell you that the videogame footage is theirs, but can't bother to credit anyone else.
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@FWNWorld/about
WTFW - Claims to have "[A] team of talented writers, voice actors, and artists work together to create immersive fan fiction stories that are sure to captivate your imagination." Just the same test-to-speech stolen content over videogames. So straight up lying claiming that everything is theirs (and that anything they make is quality).
https://href.li/?https://www.youtube.com/@WTFW
MHA2.0Fanfics - Lots of crossover theft.
https://www.youtube.com/@MHA2.0Fanfics/about
Collerwhatiif - Pretty sure this one is the same guy as the previous 2, also has one for another fandom.
https://www.youtube.com/@Collerwhatiif/about
https://www.youtube.com/@GoJoFanfiction/videos
ko_sensei - Another that claims to have a "team" that makes the stories they steal: " passionate about creating compelling and engaging fanfiction that explores the various "what ifs" in the anime universe."
https://www.youtube.com/@ko_sensei/about
FantasticWhatIf - Multifandom stealing, uses the exact same bs disclaimer as many others.
https://www.youtube.com/@FantasticWhatIf/about
LettuceHeadFanfics - No credit, no acknowledgement of anything. Next one is an alt.
https://www.youtube.com/@LettuceHeadFanfics/about
brocollifanfics - Alt of above, once again admits to stealing with a declaration of "☆If you want to takedown any videos. You can mail us or leave a comment below the video☆"
https://www.youtube.com/@brocollifanfics/about
whatifofficial786 - Focuses on MHA/Naruto crossovers. Identical format.
https://www.youtube.com/@whatifofficial786/about
NotWhatIf - I've lost track of who's an alt of who but yet another identical format, descriptions, and bullshit claims of "enhancing the viewer experience" by putting a robot voice over bootleg fortnite footage.
https://www.youtube.com/@NotWhatIf/about
weebxds - Same again.
https://www.youtube.com/@weebxds/about
ItachiFanfics - Naruto channel, we can at least confirm that this one is run by a human given the rare different descriptions and a real voice at the beginning of videos before the robot comes back.
https://www.youtube.com/@ItachiFanfics/about
WhatIfDN - As if mockingly, a bunch of videos have a "credit" section in their descriptions that is of course blank.
https://www.youtube.com/@WhatIfDN/about
SpiceandBooks and spiceandfiction - Apparently Youtube itself has started picking up on the bullshit, because this multifandom channel is being dinged as ai spam so they started a new one.
https://www.youtube.com/@SpiceandBooks/about
https://www.youtube.com/@spiceandfiction/about
theoriginalastra - Doesn't even bother with disclaimers, the following are multiple alts/potential alts for different fandoms.
https://www.youtube.com/@theoriginalastra/about
SillySenpai12 - Highschool DXD alt.
https://www.youtube.com/@SillySenpai12/about
RosieRealms - Naruto alt.
https://www.youtube.com/@RosieRealms/about
DekuWhatIfs - Potentially another astra alt but not sure, doesn't matter because all these channels do the same thing anyway.
AnimeStark688 - No credits or disclaimers.
https://www.youtube.com/@AnimeStark688/about
Please take the time to report these channels, spread this post around, and reblog with any additional offending channels you find.
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