#i'm posting this early to give people more time to participate! i figure getting all the forms and exchanges done in november | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whilomm · 2 months

Text

U.S. election voting tips for anyone who hasn't done this before (or just doesnt know this stuff)

Figured a post like this might be useful, and if you agree I would appreciate a reblog. I'll block anyone doing vote-shaming shit though, cause once again yelling at people isnt the best tool for encouraging voter participation. I tried to make it readable but long post of course, sorry about that. brevity may be the soul of wit but I am a fucking fool and I have so many words to say.

caveats:

I'm gonna do my best to note when local laws might be diff, but just in gen election laws vary a LOT state by state, even county by county. when in doubt, check your local laws, cause this shits confusing as hell sometimes

obviously this is about ya kno. U.S. elections and U.S. laws.

Doing my best, but in case I get deets wrong, please correct me in the comments, and readers please check the comments for corrections. I'll update the OG post if theres anything MAJOR so you can reblog the corrected version if needed.

First things first: get your shit in order.

Does your state/county/area have a good elections website? check it out, sometimes its easier to look info up there than on the general nationwide sites, and itll give county specific information. just google like, "[county] elections", "[city] elections". Sometimes its its own website, sometimes its under the county clerk or something, and the quality of the site will probs depend on ya kno. the size of your county, how much they invest in it, etc. I'm sure some of them Suck Ass. Here's my county's for ref, its p good.

Are you registered to vote? Check. Even if you've registered before, its good to double check occasionally in case your info is out of date, or in case theres been a purge of voting rolls.

When is the registration deadline in your area? Look it up and get it done BEFORE then!

Have you moved recently? Reregister. Your address affects what's on your ballot, and if it was a big move (like across cities/counties), you might not be ABLE to vote where you are now, at least not without driving all the way back to wherever you're registered.

College student? You can either be registered to vote back home or at college. If you're studying in california but home is in texas for example, you can either register to vote in california, or keep your texas voting address, but not both! Registering to vote locally is the easier option since you can just vote like normal, while staying registered at home means you either have to go back home to vote, or vote absentee. Not too bad if homes an hour away and its just an excuse to visit anyway, lil bit more complicated if it's several states away. Your call, but if you choose to stay registered at home, either make travel plans or get your absentee ballot stuff done EARLY. like, look it up NOW what the deadlines are, which vary state by state. go do it. And remember, absentee ballots take time to mail.

Check what your voting options are. If you wanna vote by mail for example, check if you meet the requirements. Some states make it easy as hell (or make it the main/only voting method), others make it. a pain. a real goddamn pain. Figure out what your situation is.

Check if you need to vote at a specific polling place, or if you can vote anywhere in the area. I can vote anywhere in the city so i just choose whatever is closest/least busy/beside a good boba spot, but some areas have assigned polling places where you have to go to that specific one. If you go to the wrong polling place, you can't vote. Don't waste time in line at the wrong place.

Check if early voting is an option. If it is, and provided its an option for you (good locations/dates), trust me. do it. The lines are so much shorter, and its a lot easier to go on my day off cause I got a week and a half to choose when to go. But it ain't a thing everywhere, and some places make it difficult (weird hours, weird locations, etc) so your mileage may vary of course.

Ready to vote? Cool. Now, research BEFORE you get into the booth, and maybe bring written notes with you.

"Oh, well, I just plan on voting straight ticker ya kno. anyone with a D next to their name..."

Yeah, that works for partisan races, but it aint gonna work for nonpartisan races and ballot measures.

First, nonpartisan races

These are races where the candidates do NOT have their political party noted, because well. its nonpartisan! no parties! This often applies to school board elections, sheriffs, judges, and other stuff. that means you dont get a helpful little letter to tell you who to vote for nothing but a name, and if you'll have to research to find out what their views are. This can be. Annoying on occasion. Sometimes these races have a lotta coverage, candidates with websites, endorsements, and sometimes theyre just fucking. Yeah no you just get names p much good luck 👍.

Whether or not you can look this info up in the booth depends on your area. In Texas for example, you can't get your phone out in the booth at ALL. I mean, technically the law makes it sound like you can't even have a phone within 100 feet of a polling station, but. well. I've never seen them do searches. Still, if you get stuck in the booth staring at the names, tough luck kid. Maybe if you ask theyll let you leave and come back? idk! I've never asked! But you know whats easier than that? looking up info beforehand, and writing down all those names

When looking up candidate info, make sure you keep an eye out for dogwhistles. Sometimes you only get a couple of sentences of info about a candidate for a school board election, but if those sentences mention "family values", "protecting the children", "critical race theory", "parent's rights", etc. well. you know they probably got some rightwing politics going on. Probably don't vote for them unless you want even MORE book bans. I feel like judges and sheriffs are usually easier to get more detailed info on, but again, look for dogwhistles, and if available, look at their records.

Propositions and Ballot Measures

Sometimes, elections include you getting to vote on stuff DIRECTLY, rather than you know. The people you elected deciding everything. Sometimes these are relatively boring (but oftentimes still important) stuff like taxes and whatnot, sometimes theyre Major Ass Measures (like states literally putting abortion rights to a vote), and sometimes they LOOK boring on the surface but wooo boy, look a lil deeper and this shit is spicey.

The problem though? Well, a lotta these things are written to be confusing as hell. Sometimes this is just because its aforementioned boring (but important) tax stuff and you just have no idea what any of this means, other times its because the measures are deliberately written in a confusing manner to obfuscate what you're REALLY voting on. At least where I am, on the ballot itself you only get to see a the name of the measure and a quick paragraph explaining it, so there can be a LOT of shit hidden in the actual official text of the act.

theres lots of ways they do this, but a few major things:

Giving the measure a confusing name. "shelter animal welfare act". Well, that sounds nice! you like animals, and the welfare thereof! But you look a lil closer, and find out that the main thing the act will ACTUALLY do is shut down/defund shelters because they arent "meeting standards", which the act deliberately sets waaay too high, cause the goal of the act is actually to just. save a few bucks by diverting money away from shelters.

The actual wording of the prop being confusing. You read the little blurb beneath it, and it talks about beautifying parks to increase visitors. Cool! but uh, turns out that means selling it off to private investors who plan on developing those boring natural areas into a cool new concert venue, charge admission, and oh turns out its gonna ruin the habitat for an endangered salamander species. (Like, not that outdoor concert areas cant be cool, but not in the salamander habitat man. fuck off.)

deliberately making it confusing what voting "for" or "against" mean. Like. Okay, am i voting yes to NOT allow them to sell off the salamander habitat?? am i voting NO to not block the sale?? or is it the other way around?? what the fuck man. cant even read this shit my god.

having multiple similar sounding propositions which are actually Very Different. Happened here in austin recently, we had two "police reform acts", both with very similar ballot language, but one was sponsored by the police union and designed to fuck up the ACTUAL police reform act.

And many more!! i never trust the ballot language on the proposition. sometimes a quick look shows its just what it seems like, and other times boy howdy do i got some shit to sort thru.

How hard it is to find out info on candidates and props varies. Good places to start:

Local newspapers, which often have candidate/prop info and endorsements. Personally, I usually look at the papers I know are more left-leaning for their endorsements to get me started (taking note of course of their reasonings for why they endorse certain candidates, cause of course sometimes i Disagree). Still good for getting some of the easier ones outta the way (like "this school board candidate is pro book bans, this ones anti", good enough for me, one less race to research!). You can also look at the shitty rightwing newspapers, see who they endorse, and vote the opposite way lmao

Sites like vote 411, ballotready, or ballotpedia, which let you enter in your address to find a sample ballot and ALSO give info on races. Some of them have a feature where you can go through, read info race-by-race and select your choices as you go, then give you a printable selection list. for example, they might have a short questionaire for each school board candidate where you can read their answers, or short blurbs for the "yes" and "no" endorsements for props. on that note,

LOOK AT ENDORSEMENTS! this one is huge sometimes. Maybe the "no" option on an act is endorsed by local wildlife orgs, conservation groups, leftwing orgs, etc, while the "yes" option is endorsed by chevron, Oil R Us, The Center For The Destruction Of Rare Endangered Salamanders, Autism Speaks for some goddamn reason... Well, it's not always that easy, but hell, sometimes it is. Keep in mind that you can't always tell a group's politics by their name though, cause the "deliberately misleading titles" thing also applies political groups formed for the specific purpose of endorsing shit to make it look better/worse, so if its not comically obvious like this, or theres names you dont recognize, give it another looksie. Also works for candidates!

Note that sometimes the "yes" and "no" options will have their own websites just like candidates do to make finding who endorses them easier, since they might just have lists of who endorses that option right there. Not all the time though (and sometimes theyre hard to find), but its a great tool when you do find em!

if you really wanna get deep into research, well, you can always snoop the candidates socials if they got em. thats usually too much for me unless i REALLY need to check em out, though.

Luckily, I usually find that I don't need to research every single little race or prop, and its just a few every once in a while i REALLY gotta dig into. dont worry, not every single election is a fucking research project, just go thru it and CHECK whether you gotta dig deeper on anything or nah

like, if i have a long ass ballot with 50 things to vote on, I might have 25 nonpartisian races and ballot measures I gotta look up first. Most of the NP races I super quickly choose bc the newspaper im looking at endorsements for straight up tells me some of them are conservatives, and most of the ballot measures are p straightforward, cool. Theres like 3 NP races im Not Sure About to dig into tho, and like 2 ballot measures im still confused on. So, out of 50 things to vote on, i might only have like, 5 i need to dig into to varying degrees. or, sometimes I get into it, and nah all of these are straightforward, im good.

Once you're done researching, write it down, get it on paper.

Unless its a mega short ballot that you can easily remember (or you just have crazy good memory), write it down, print out a sample ballot to fill out, or use a site like vote 411/ballotpedia to print your choices. you dont wanna get in the booth and forget half the shit. As far as I can tell, paper notes and stuff are always allowed.

Actually Voting Stuff

Lots of states have pretty strict electioneering laws, and you can be kicked out or asked to change for stuff as simple as "wearing campaign apparel". Usually defined by distance from the polling place, which varies by state. Unless you're SURE your state doesnt outlaw it, I would skip those campaign shirts and pins, or just anything that could debately be called "political". Could stuff like queer pride shirts be called "political"? I honestly have no fuckin idea, seems like a kinda not set issue, and maybe it wouldnt hold up if someone DID say something, but personally I wouldnt chance it. Dress Boring. leave your pins at home or in the car.

Check what ID you need to bring, and bring it. you dont wanna get to the front of an hour long line and find out you forgot your ID.

Be careful about selfies and phone use! As Stated, some states like texas seem to outlaw phone use entirely around the polls (though last I checked I was a bit confused by some states whos laws were about "photography devices such as cell phones", are they only banned if being USED for photography or entirely? still confused tbh), some outlaw just photography in gen, some only outlaw pics of your ballot itself, and some states dont give a shit if you take a ballot selfie. If you don't wanna do the research, just go with the safest option: no phone in polling place, and take the selfie with your sticker after you leave. if you fuck up, your vote may be invalidated, meaning you basically didnt vote. If you KNOW you live in a state where its chill tho, do what you want 👍

Double check your votes when you're able to. If its a paper ballot give it a good glance afterward, if its electronic it should have a results screen before the final confirmation

yaaaay good job. you voted. dont forget the sticker. you should get yourself a lil treat too. I usually get boba. mmmmm balls in my mouth yum.

anyway. hope this is vaguely helpful, reblog if you feel like it. if this ends up getting any notes, check em for extra advice, corrections, etc.

#uspol #us politics #us elections #long post #long #voting #us voting #usa elections #elections #buzzy #this might get zero notes like most of my psas but eh every once in a while they get reblogs #might as well try yea?

5 notes · View notes

darkisrising · 5 months

Note

⭐

(But also I'm greedy and if you want to do Never Leaving Well Enough Alone, I have a special soft spot for that one since it's one of the first ones of yours I ever read.)

(link to game if anyone wants to play)

Sure thing, friend! Never Leaving Well Enough Alone was one of my first attempts at writing in the Mandalorian world. My friend @treescape was writing dinluke and was talking about how active the ship was (back in those early days, circa 2021). Since I was writing quiobi where we were small but very engaged, I was intrigued by this phenomenon of hordes of ppl reading a single fic at once, but made the off hand comment that I doubted I was good for writing any other ship, since I'd only just returned to writing fanfic and still was in my painfully insecure era. But then she said something along the line of (back then) there being very little explicit content for the ship (oooooooh how the tables have turned on THAT lmaoo) and I had this moment of "well... I can write sex at the very least?" so my first few dinluke I went into them with the very clear objective to sex them up more than the landscape at the time was doing, since I *think* if I recall that the emphasis on the ship back then was more on Luke as a potential second dad for Grogu... very romancing the single dad vibes... and mando was essentially one big walking chastity belt.

NLWEA was basically me throwing a chunk of sex into the ship, and then I was gonna run away and hide. At least, that was my plan. So it's a 5+1 time structure, with the idea that they kept running into each other, and then at some point they would have sex. That's... pretty much it. I knew Luke because I went through a hard core OT phases back when the OT was re-released, and I like my Luke as the mouthy Tattooine "what a hunk of junk" farmboy so that's what I wanted to play with in this one. Han's ride or die. Leia's headache of a trouble-magnet brother. I don't think I'd even managed to watch all the episodes of Mando season 1 when I wrote this, let alone 2, but I liked the eternally exhausted freelancer in a gig economy bounty hunter we first meet in the show and figured meh. Why not give it a whirl? The sheer shock of waking up from throwing a post up on ao3 and getting the kudos email the next day. I mean. I can't overstress how MANY readers there were back then. Just. Mindbreaking amounts. I went from quiobi where a hundred kudos was like "oh man, yes, yay, I'm so proud of myself" to just. *hundreds* upon hundreds at once. It was... well. Yeah. Addictive to chase that validation. That's probably not what you're supposed to say when it comes to writing fic, that you got swept up in the attention, but it is what it is. I did. And it was very *very* fun to be participating in a fandom like that, when there's interest and energy, and so so so SO many talented people working at once at a frantic pace. It was such a rush.

I wrote without a really clear idea of where the story was going, except for the structure. As I wrote I was also watching the last few episodes of Mando season 2, and when I watched the episodes with cgi Luke I was like oh huh this isn't really the Luke I remember at all. Part of the lack of affectation was the cgi, but I liked the idea of trying to thread the needle between young Luke and Jedi "stoically driven by the force" Luke, so that's where chapter 4 changes mood from hijinks Luke to reserved Luke. And then, that let me have some fun with the idea that Luke was so consumed/inebriated with the force he absolutely didnt recognize Din from his younger days. Which made the reveal that Din knew extra fun to play with in the next chapter. Chapter 5 also happens to be the first time I wrote Boba Fett, and may *that* be noted by the historians, because I fell in deep, deep love with that man from that moment on. Which eventually led us to the BobaDinLuke stuff that took over my life for the last few years 😆

#ask box #ask game #dark is thinking #dinluke

7 notes · View notes

barilleon · 2 years

Text

Holding A Mini-Con Online For Your Friends, or How To Learn A Lot of TTRPGs at Once

In November of 2020, nobody I knew was leaving their house to go eat turkeys with their family. We wanted to protect the ones we loved, but that left us with a whole lot of nothing to do where usually there was... something. Thus, the TRPG (Tabletop fRiendsgiving Potluck Games) was born!

You can do something like this too! Because chances are, your friends all know at least one game system to teach it to everyone else. And some of these systems don't take long to prep or run at all. In this post, I'll talk about how we do it and why it's a great idea if you and your friends are looking to learn more ttrpgs.

I have a private Discord Server called the Demonweb Shitpit, which is where I playtest everything I self publish. It's a very chill, invitation-only place that is reserved for friends. It doesn't have a code of conduct or anything like that; this isn't a community I'm managing. It's just a perpetual virtual house party. I wanted to wake up and head to the virtual fridge for breakfast and find two people standing in the virtual kitchen yelling about probability distribution, and that's what the Shitpit is. During the early days of the Pandemic, I really wanted to make life easier for everyone at that party.

The rules of the potluck are simple: everyone brings a game (or an event, like hosting a talk or panel) to play. That's what a potluck is. We've done this for three years now, and it is always a blast. I've played so many games I never would have otherwise: If It Hadn't Been for Cotton-Eyed Joe. Kids on Brooms. Blue Rose. Big Motherfucking Crab Truckers.

Here's how we do it:

Gather a group of interested people in one place. Discord works the best, because it has A/V built in for running games. You could also probably use a Facebook Event page or similar if you wanted.

Figure out a time people are available. You can set this over a long weekend (our first year, it was Thanksgiving Weekend) or on certain days of the week over the course of a month (One year it was "weekends during November).

Let everybody bring something to the Potluck. This doesn't necessarily mean that every one of these games is going to happen. You always need more players than you do games. But it is a potluck, and volunteering is part of the price.

Gather this information using a Google Form or similar: what are you bringing, what do people need to participate, when would you be available to facilitate, etc.

Get everyone to vote on which things they are most interested in trying out. Now you know which things are popular and which things might not shake out.

Make a calendar (Google Calendar or a Notion Database work great) of events and let people sign up for them. I usually let people sign up via informal poll on Discord:

After that, we make threads in the Discord channel for each game, and the folks running or facilitating coordinate things like how to prep for the game, safety tools, and content warnings.

Usually at the end of a potluck session, where I'd normally do something like Stars and Wishes, we have a talkback session. We talk about the system moreso than the session itself, give our impressions on it, and highlight moments or mechanics we really liked. It helps with learning a system if you can name one or two things you liked about it after the session is over.

What Games To Bring?

You are probably not going to want to bring a big, involved game with big, involved character creation to the potluck. If you really want to, check to see if the game has a quickstart with premade characters and simplified rules. Also, since you are introducing a game to folks who likely have never played it, multiply your estimated time to run the session by 1.5 at least. GMless games work really well, especially if there is little to no character creation, or character creation is an explicit part of play.

If you're going to run a potluck with your friends but need a starting point for games to bring, here's a quick list of games that might work well:

i'm sorry did you say street magic - worldbuilding, GMless fun

Stealing the Throne - you make your characters *during* play, which means you get to play right away

The Ground Itself - worldbuilding and GMless, a delight

Everyone Is John - VERY simple to learn!

Cozy Town - The best Stardewlike in my opinion

Paranormal Inc - GMless mystery game, where you draw clues and build the story together!

Heart: Quickstart - Dungeon Crawling, Underground City, premade characters

Orbital Blues Quickstart - Premade characters, You're Poor And In Space, Easy to Read & Run

Why Are We Doing This?

Our Potluck is one of the events I look forward to every year, and it's so easy and fun to get started. Also, if you're the kind of person who needs to play something in order to get a good feel for it, this is a really good opportunity. And scheduling to run a game for your friends is a great motivator to learn it. My friends and I are all in this together, and I don't want to let them down, so I prepare a kickass session and show up to their sessions. BOOM, now my horizons have expanded exponentially.

Including the talkback or any space to reflect on the game helps cement in our minds what we liked and didn't like about a system. And in future design conversations, we now have a shared vocabulary of all the Potluck games we've played together. When we talk about something, I'll go, "Remember that time in Blue Rose when you looked around and saw the set pieces?" and the folks who were playing will know what I mean and know what I'm getting at, and what experiences I'm trying to capture in our new project.

It's also just fun! Make fun memories with your friends and step out of your comfort zones. That's what it's all about baby!

#my blogs #ttrpgs

82 notes · View notes

lukida1999 · 2 months

Text

❣️What I love about NewGen❣️

I never win anything (and I've never posted anything on Tumblr before), but I'll try my luck, because if I don't even try, I can't win!

I started playing MCL (Sweet Amoris in my case) in early 2015 after coming across the game by chance. At first I just wanted to try it out, but because I immediately fell in love with the game, I stayed and almost 10 years later I'm still here playing NewGen!

❥ I love the forum!

I loved it on MCL and Eldarya (I still do!) and I love it on NewGen! It's so cool to meet people who have the same interests as you. I also love reading fanfics and admiring fanart. It's incredible how talented some players are!

❥ I love Jason!

When I saw the new LI's (which at the time were Amanda, Thomas, Roy and Devon) for the very first time, I thought they were all nice to look at, but as far as descriptions went, no one really seemed to fit me. I figured my Candy would probably date Thomas, because he seemed the most appealing to me, but then Jason came along and I was hooked! I'm a fan of the enemies-to-lovers trope and Jason is also just incredibly good looking. His light strands of hair and his blue eyes are so beautiful! When I met him for the first time in the episodes, it confirmed to me that he is the right choice for my Candy. The interactions with him are great and I can never wait to meet him again!

❥ I love that you get a text message from the LI's after every episode!

It's a very cool idea and I'm always curious to see what the LI's write. Jason's messages in particular make me laugh every time.

❥ I love putting outfits together for my Candy!

I love dressing up my Guardian and my old Candy and also love dressing up my new Candy. Unfortunately, I don't own any packs in NewGen yet, so I'm a bit limited when it comes to clothes. That's why I would be even happier to win the E-Girl pack! The boots and belt in particular suit my taste perfectly and my Candy would rock them so much! I've always wanted headphones like these in real life, so it would be cool to be able to see my Candy wear them!

❥ I love that when you save an outfit, the LI's comment on the "post"!

It's so funny to see the emojis!

❥ I love that you can decorate Candy's room yourself!

It makes the whole thing even more personal and that's great. It makes me feel much more like I'm playing my own Candy than it would if the room wasn't to my taste!

❥ Last but not least: I love the outfit competitions!

Due to the lack of packs, it's not always so easy for me to put together an outfit that fits the theme, but I always do my best! Unfortunately, I've never been on one of the podiums, but at least I've come 5th before with the outfit you see above. Even if things don't always go so well for me, I really enjoy admiring the other users' contributions. It's amazing what you can do with relatively few pieces of clothing! I've already seen cosplays and other incredibly creative combinations!

Thank you @tetrakys for giving us the opportunity to win this pack! Good luck to all participants❣️

#my candy love

3 notes · View notes

lizzylucky · 1 year

Text

Well over a year ago, I made and pinned a post explaining that I was essentially going through a mental rut and that's why I wasn't interacting with people much anymore. To put it simply.

My upper estimate for that "rut" was 2 months. Turns out, I was experiencing the early stages and warning signs for... like, full-on, legitimate burn out, and it hasn't stopped yet. Everything I've read says it can take between a few months and 5 years, which is... scary.

I don't have a lot of followers left, and I haven't interacted in fandoms or with people I admire much at all in a long time. I make efforts here and there, and sometimes I manage to find a blog I really like and I try to interact with it for a little while. It usually pewters out after a couple weeks. All that to say, there's not likely a lotta people who really care what's going on with me- which isn't to say people dislike me or something, just that I'm regarded neutrally because I don't have much of a presence, and I get that.

But for anyone who might care, I'm going through a lot. I haven't gotten my car back in the last year and a half and have given up on it. I had to move out of the apartment I was living from, 6 hours away from my best friend, and back in with my family. College has become an incomplete, distant past. I can't work, I can't take care of myself or my things, I barely do enough to keep my pets alive and relatively healthy... And I literally do not possess the ability to enjoy things or experience passion the way I used to or the way I should. I don't really have hobbies anymore, no goals or aspirations- and I often feel like I've been stripped of my personality.

I spend the majority of my time idly trying to entertain my overactive brain with content that goes in and out without leaving much of a lasting impression, trying to pass time between when I'm not eating, sleeping, or using the bathroom. Bottom line, total honesty- life sucks. And sometimes I don't want to be experiencing it anymore.

I figured, because September is suicide awareness and prevention month, maybe it was time I update the last pinned post to something a little more current.

I'm not planning on going anywhere, speaking on that grander scale. But I've lost a lot of my vigor for life, and I have no idea how long before I feel up to more actively participating in the things that should be bringing me joy again, or even if I will. I'll still be here, occasionally finding ways to sort of interact, but I have nothing to really offer. So... thanks to anyone that still knows who I am, and don't ever feel guilty if we lose touch or you find yourself losing interest in being in contact. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

I'll hold on to that little hope that things get better one day, in the meantime. Don't none of you give up just yet, either. ❤️

8 notes · View notes

fedorahead · 8 months

Text

I don't say this lightly (and this is a heavy post that deals with subject matter you'll likely want to scroll past)

I started using tumblr again when I kept getting banned from facebook for being me (read: an edgy douche)

I've never felt more seen, accepted, or included on here. People run with jokes instead of being angry they don't get them. There is no in-group out-group dynamic, it's all just participate as much as you want.

There's a lot of love on tumblr.

I spent my whole life under the control of my father. He didn't have much time to fuck me up, but he managed even with only partial custody. I stopped talking to him at 15, reconnected at 18 for a little while and stopped again because I had awful nightmares every time I saw him. Tried again in my early 20s. I always wanted a dad, and the one I had, I thought, might be salvageable.

I lived in that delusion for 31 years. Hoping one day he would grow up, too.

This weekend, I had the epiphany that everyone else around me already knew (I think). That the abusive behaviours weren't an uncontrolled fluke or rough days. That my entire childhood I was being groomed. For what? I never saw myself in other peoples' stories because I never had firsthand, conscious experiences with stuff that other people can point to and say "this, this was the abuse". But I have stories other people told, and then recanted, and the narrative that they were lying the whole time or it was a misunderstanding. And I believed that grey area because I did not remember what he was accused of doing, and nothing exists if you can't prove it to yourself.

Every aspect of who I am has been influenced by my dad's choice to raise me to become his partner. I dunno if it was conscious or unconscious, but I know it fucked me up so bad I spent my whole life running, changing names, hiding, trying to help people and never knowing why I feel the things I do.

This has always been reinforced by people judging me. He harnessed my fear of rejection, taught me to fight the system in specific ways that would give me more power, and adhere to a lot more social expectations than I bucked. To come across as a rebel while maintaining total control. The critical, anxious voice in my head that sounded like rational care and worry and protecting myself has always been him, telling me not to do the things he was disgusted with, telling me how to prepare for situations so I would have the upper hand, everything to become someone that impressed him. And the whole time, I thought I was impressing myself. Meanwhile, people around me liked what I was doing and validated it and reinforced it and then when I broke character, people I thought were friends would turn on me right away.

He wanted me to be as charismatic as him, and I am, and it meant that a lot of people saw me the way he saw me. And a lot of people have recognized and exploited that vulnerability. And I kept thinking the trauma was from *them*, but honestly I got to them broken and I don't really think they could have broken me more.

Tumblr doesn't give a shit if I'm charismatic or if I adhere to social expectations. If my clothes don't fit or don't hide my legs or belly nobody on here will notice. If I wanna be sexy or funny or creative or angry, there are people on here who will support it.

I'd never experienced that kind of freedom before and I genuinely couldn't have figured out how much I was still under his thumb in the world where everybody scrutinizing me kept me firmly in place. I saw glimpses of freedom and never experienced it until I came here and it was genuine.

Thank you, tumblr, for giving me enough room to look back at the person I was pretending to be clearly for the first time.

Thank you for empowering me to be disgusting, slutty, dumb, clumsy, baffling, awkward, ugly, tasteless, and confused without giving me a moral burden tied to each one. I'm not a terrible person, I'm a pretty good one. And I can be flawed and fucked up and still be a pretty good person. And no matter how many people tried to tell me that, I would never feel it until I had a place to genuinely experience it firsthand.

Thank you 💚

6 notes · View notes

wherefore-whinnies · 2 years

Note

for my second playthrough I'm trying hard classic and it's so hard I've had to restart the maps so often bc people die and the time crystal can't fix it 😭 idk how you could do maddening!!

😱 good luck!!! actually I was joke-writing a post of Maddening Pro Tips™ last night but then I decided to go to bed instead. but perhaps this is a good place to put them.

don't separate your units and don't try to go too fast! later on even in hard difficulty your units will be able to solo things and you can play aggressively more easily, but at the start you will need to keep them together and have them work together to get kills.

memorize your units' personal skills and pay attention to positioning take advantage of them: Alear's personal (+3 damage per hit and -1 damage taken per hit from foes to adjacent units) is extremely useful throughout the game. Chloé does extra damage per hit when she's within 2 spaces of a male and female ally that are adjacent to one another. Louis takes less damage per hit when he's within 2 spaces of 2 adjacent female allies. every bit of damage or reduced damage counts!

Vander is most useful as a meat shield. he'll eat up kills while barely gaining xp if you let him so unequip his weapon if he's getting too many kills, but in early chapters you can absolutely shove him in front of more vulnerable units to block enemy attacks. (he also gives Alear a small crit bonus when adjacent to him.)

positioning continues to be key: take advantage of chain attacks from back-ups. in maddening they're actually my main source of damage to bosses, who regularly take 0 damage from my regular attacks, but my chain attackers gang up on them to hurt them anyway. I'm not sure exactly how chain damage is calculated but it is fixed (goes between 3-6 damage for me depending on some circumstances I don't understand yet) and always 80% accuracy (unless you have a dragon using All For One) and it really really adds up. relatedly, you can switch a unit's weapon without wasting their move, so you can use this to make sure your backup has like a spear or hand axe equipped so that they can join in on other attacks.

this is a tip for later game but Emblem Lyn's Call Doubles skill is the absolute best skill in the game imo. the game only says that the doubles participate in chain attacks but that is literally the LEAST important thing that they can do. I've used them to block hallways and create a choke point when the enemies would've demolished my running-away units otherwise. they also RETALIATE if the enemy attacks them and misses? which is amazing? and most importantly, the AI is incredibly dumb and it seems like bosses in particular will ALWAYS target a clone if one is available. most likely because they have 1 hp. and in particular this means bosses will absolutely waste their engage attacks on these poor clones so that you don't have to worry about one of your actually-killable units getting lodestar rushed. these doubles have saved my ass SO MANY TIMES. idk what they were thinking when they made this skill it seems so unassuming but is actually so broken.

if you have the extra money, tonics are helpful for difficult battles. I've always ignored them until this particular playthrough but I know people make heavy use of them in stuff like conquest lunatic. you can also use tonics on the world map before a battle (I just learned this after spending like half an hour in a battle having everyone cluster around Alear and shuffle items in their convoy in order to imbibe one of each tonic which took like 20 turns).

sometimes (or for me, literally all the time) you have to try a map multiple times to figure out how the enemy moves, what aggros certain enemies, etc. to figure out a playbook to go by so you can get to the hardest parts while using as few divine pulses as possible. e.g. for chapter 17 it took me like 4 failed tries but then I ended up with a strategy that could get me through the first 3-4 bosses with minimal divine pulse use.

you did not ask for this lol but if you read some of it I hope it helps!!

13 notes · View notes

intheticklecloset · 2 years

Text

3k Follower Raffle Event!

Hello! Now that it's been about a month since the milestone and I've finally figured out what I want to do for it, let's get this party started!

So this will be my first time doing something like this and it's a little different, but bear with me - I think it'll all make sense as I explain below. Long story short: I'm COMBINING this raffle event with the 12 DAYS OF FICMAS that I typically do in December! I've tried to organize all the info you'll need below in a tidy little FAQ style, so please take a look and read thoroughly before submitting a request! ^^

Below the cut because it's kind of long!

~~~

How does it work?

Basically, send in a fic request like you normally would when my free reqs are open (I know it's been a minute, and if this is your first time participating in a free req round, welcome!). It can be as simple as just giving me a couple of characters (if you want to give me free reign to do what I want) or as complex as a specific idea you have in mind. Just know that if you go into TOO much detail (like outlining the entire fic) I will probably decline just because it feels like you've written it yourself at that point, if that makes sense. Be sure to brush up on my available fandoms, character restrictions, etc. before submitting.

When the time comes, I will throw the requests I've gotten into a virtual bowl, shake it up, and RANDOMLY select 12 winners, who will then have their fic released sometime during the 12 Days of Ficmas in December!

When is the deadline?

This event will be open starting RIGHT NOW and will remain open until 5pm PST on Sunday, November 6! The drawing will take place shortly thereafter; I'll make a separate post about it later.

Can I submit multiple requests?

Not this time! I want to make sure as many people as possible have a chance to win a free request. Please choose carefully and only submit once.

Is it possible for you to decline a fic?

Yes. If you submit a request that strays from my fandom/character restrictions and/or is TOO detailed (aka an entire outline for a fic rather than just a general idea of what you're looking for) I will likely decline it. I'll make sure to let you know if it's declined, and as long as the event is still open, you're welcome to request again. Just remember not to submit more than once unless I've declined a previous submission!

What fandoms are available?

I've updated my fandom list to reflect what fandoms I'm willing to accept for this raffle. Basically anything that's not struck out is fair game!

How will I know if my request won?

I'll be making a "winner's list" announcement post after the raffle to let you know who the lucky winners are!

What will you do with the requests that don't win?

At this point I'm planning to hang on to them just in case I feel inspired to write one later after the event is over, but I make NO PROMISES!

This is a lot of fics in a short amount of time; are you still going to reopen commissions in December?

Yes, I'm still planning to reopen commissions, though they'll likely open AFTER the event is over to give me a little breathing room. I'm doing the raffle as early as I am so I can get started filling the requests in November. I learned from this past TickleTober that filling the prompts ahead of time is SUPER SMART and way easier! LOL

~~~

If you have any questions about the event that weren't answered here, definitely let me know! Otherwise, refresh yourself on my fandom list/character restrictions and ask away! I'm excited to see what kinds of fics you guys ask for! Best of luck to you all, and THANK YOU again for 3,000+ followers!! <3

#free requests #raffle #fic raffle #tickle fics #raffle event #milestone event #thank you all

21 notes · View notes

olderthannetfic · 2 years

Note

i saw a thread on twitter saying that otw elections being only for $10+ donators is intentionally leaving out people from the global south and other financially challenged people. i know that it's kind of BS but i cant exactly put my finger on why

It's not entirely BS.

Literally any price point has this issue. $10 is quite a chunk of change for some countries and is less than 2 fancy coffees for others.

We discussed this when we were setting up OTW. We opted not to have a labor-instead-of-money thing because it would involve keeping "Fannish name X is wallet name Y" records. I think we can all see that this practice would lead nowhere good.

(In nonprofits that are some uncontested "save the children" stuff, I think it would make sense to allow people to donate services instead of $10. People serve in those under their wallet names anyway.)

We also opted not to make it $1 because if you put it very, very low, it's not an effective deterrent to people from rich countries who would misuse it.

People do try to game the Hugos, which is expensive, but it's people who might well already have attended those cons or bought the supporting memberships. For a lot of things, once you get above a couple of dollars, the temptation to buy 5 in your friends' names goes away.

Moreover, this is not the only way that money shit is unfair internationally.

In the early days, we couldn't accept donations from a lot of places. I'm sure there are still some where it's an issue. There are tons of fans who could save up the equivalent of $10, but they can't get a credit card or access to Paypal or any of the easy ways to send money to the US.

Being an international organization of this type means providing services to a wide array of people who simply can't participate financially.

Building something like AO3 is inherently the work of people with more resources for the purpose of benefiting a larger community with fewer.

It sucks that some passionate people simply cannot participate in voting. But that's the reality of organizations: sometimes, practicality has to trump being scrupulously "fair" about giving absolutely everyone a turn.

Making a system where the barriers to entry were so low that douchebags in the US could flood in with spurious voting accounts would also not be fair to people from the global south who just want an uncensored archive that stays up.

I think it's less that the OTW rule itself is unfair and more that it highlights inequality that already exists and is a fact of life.

In an ideal world, sure, OTW would find a way to charge different prices depending on local cost of living. Maybe they will one day. But doing that requires time and resources. There is no magic "Be fair and nice to everyone! It costs nothing!" answer here.

So basically, I think that observation is true as a literal fact.

The reason it smells fishy is that you can tell the people saying it have ulterior motives.

They want to pretend that the ~noble oppressed people~ of the world would side with their pro-censorship message. Or they want other whiny people from rich countries to agree that OTW is Big Unfair Meanies. It's not actually about figuring out how to get the ability to vote to specific fans who genuinely want it.

I'll also note that you don't have to be a voting member to be a volunteer or a staff member or to run for the Board. Someone with few financial resources but with time and skills could still have a fair amount of power in OTW.

There are other practical realities aside from money that are also not fair, like many volunteers being in one time zone and not another, so realtime meetings will suck for the outlier. OTW operates in English and has a strong American contingent; culturally and linguistically, that excludes people who are nonetheless welcome to post works on AO3. Working for OTW requires a lot of free time and specific skills. Not everyone has those.

Life ain't fair.

#always a typo #I swear to god

263 notes · View notes

alltoosam · 2 years

Note

🐣🐨🦔🐢🐄🐸🐧🦭

DID YOU LIKE MY COUNTDOWN!? That was fun! I had fun. That was actually more fun than I thought it would be! There were too many good posts to name. It was very fun reading all your comments and theories. Though side note: animal anon has no problem with people joining her BUT it must be animals and it must not mess with my countdown. No statues! Animal anon does animals, not statues. Side side note: can someone settle the debate of if that emoji is a hedgehog or a porcupine? Because I have no idea. Side note side note side note: sorry if you got multiple asks in a day...my system isn't perfected yet so sometimes I send two (or three) because I forgot I sent one and didn't want to accidently miss anyone (also sorry if i did miss you, still perfecting the system, no one has been animal anon blacklisted, i promise!)

Anyway, GUESS WHAT TODAY IS!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 It's been one year since I started animal anon! How exciting is that?! Phew, what a year we've had together! I mean what better way to start this second year than some chaos since that's how animal anon started to begin with! I will admit, it was slightly stressful coming up with something to meet the occasion of this event. I hope the countdown and this post live up to it. No, I'm not going to reveal myself just yet.. maybe that will be for year 2...😏😏. BUT I will give you some fun facts about me! So let's see; first, I'm from the Midwest (so not Canadian, but close so I do have a slight accent), but I currently live in the TriState area. Second, I am a MASSIVE theater nerd. No, seriously I have been to 21 shows since Broadway reopened in September and I'm actually going to my 22nd tonight. I don't know if this makes that fact better or worse, but I've really only been to about 12 different show because out of those 22, 10 of those are one specific show. Third, I am fluent in German and English. Though, I suck at writing in German, I never learned how to, so don't ask me to do that please. Fourth, my favorite color is red, so you can guess my favorite Taylor album (and coincidently also the show I've been to see 10 times on Broadway...). Fifth, I love to talk A LOT if you couldn't tell by the essays I send yall. And lastly, I can also confirm I am not Taylor...but I will say that I do share something very important with her... tell me your guesses down below as to what very important thing you think Taylor and I have in common, and I'll send some extra animals to whomever I see gets it right first!

So contuining on with my dissertation here, this week I have been trying to figure out a prompt to live up to this occasion. As I already mentioned, my system isn't perfect! And I've been thinking a lot about community lately and how that's been lacking for so many because of Covid. So what I want yall to do is if you get this dissertation of mine, please send a message, post, anon, whatever you want to at least 1 other blog (though you can do more), telling them something you like about them and giving them an animal emoji! That way we can keep spreading the love all day long to as many as possible! 🥰

As always, you are all brilliant, kind, worthy, beautiful and as this past week has shown, hilarious and unique human beings. No seriously, some of your posts had me kneeling over in laughter. If you would so like, you can tag #animalanon so I and everyone can read all your lovely posts! IM STARTING EARLY TODAY SO WE CAN PARTY ALL DAY LONG BECAUSE I LOVE YALL SO MUCH 🎊 🦥🦁🐯

aw animal anon hello!!! i’m sorry I haven’t been able to participate much with the fun this week work has been so crazy for me, but I really appreciate your asks and still being included in the fun! happy anniversary! 🐹🐷🐙🐬

it’s been so great talking to you and getting to know you. I love receiving your asks, thank you so much for thinking of me and creating such a fun and supportive environment in our little community here. As far as what you share with Taylor hmmm maybe your birthday?! are you a fellow december baby as well? I’m on the 21st😊

#animalanon #asks #anon

4 notes · View notes

wanderlustinwonderland18 · 4 years

Text

Stepanova & Bukin: “Our Fans Really Want Us To Be Together”

How do you feel about being the new Russian National Champions?

Vanya: Wow! To be honest, we didn't get enough sleep. It was a busy time. We sat, talked with the team, discussed a lot. This was our first competition in a long time, so we were a little exhausted.

Sasha: So far, we don't really feel that something major has happened, but the assessment of our coaches is very important for us. They didn't know how we would perform. Yes, the coaches did everything to make us perform well. But from the very start, everything depended only on us... And we managed to perform well so many thanks to our team for this.

Vanya: In general, we liked everything very much. We missed the audience a lot and we hope to perform somewhere else soon. Yes, there are nerves, but they are very pleasant nerves. Competition is great.

Is this national title the main award of your career?

Sasha: No. We have silver and bronze medals from European Championships. We have also performed well at World Championships. The situation here is completely different in all aspects. We had a different task... But overall, we are very pleased with the title of Russian National Champions.

Vanya: Yes, indeed, this is the first time for us. The support was great. Even though the arena was only 35 percent capacity, we felt incredible warmth.

Is the lack of vivid emotions due to the fact your main competitors were not here?

Sasha: Yes, many skaters were missing in Chelyabinsk. It’s a pity that this is the case. We, ourselves, were not able to participate in early competitions such as the Grand Prix in Moscow.

Vanya: For instance, Dima Aliev did not compete here although we were expecting him. We are friends with him, and we communicate a lot. We hope to meet the entire Russian team after the New Year.

Did this situation personally blur the impression of the Russian Championships?

Sasha: Of course. In addition, the federation indicated that this is not the final selection for the World Championships. We simply perceived it as a certain stage where we need to show what we are capable of.

Vanya: On the other hand, the fact that it was our first competition in a long time added more importance to it.

Is it a shame that Europeans got cancelled, while everything goes well in other sports?

Vanya: Of course, it's upsetting.

Sasha: I don’t really follow what is happening in other sports, but the cancellation of our Europeans was not a surprise. Everything pointed towards this direction gradually. We were ready for this news. We understand that holding a competition in such conditions is difficult and unsafe.

How do you feel now?

Sasha: I’m good now, thanks.

Vanya: Yes, we have already recovered.

You guys joked at the press conference that you were unlucky, because you were ill with COVID at different times.

(Sasha and Vanya laugh)

Sasha: Well, yes, we were really out of luck.

How did this happen? You spend so much time together.

Sasha: At first, I just caught a cold. There was bronchitis or something like that. I got better and then fell ill again, but with COVID. I don't know why that happened, but after I got sick, the coaches and Vanya fell ill.

Vanya: Why this happened is still a mystery to us. It is very incomprehensible.

How did you handle the disease?

Vanya: It was not easy. I had palpable lung damage. The temperature was monitored for a very long time, and the dose of antibiotics was quite strong. The hardest part is not how I got sick, but how I went back to the ice. It was very strange and a little scary.

Sasha: You may be fine at home, but as soon as you go out on the ice, you immediately start coughing due to the cold air and the slightest exertion. Usually for us, skating in circles is nothing at all... But after the illness, the body perceives it as a serious threat and reacts instantly. It is scary. You start thinking: "How am I going to skate now?"

Did it come to hospitalizations?

Sasha and Vanya: No.

Vanya: Fortunately, it didn't come to that. I didn't have extreme temperatures (around 37.5 to 38 only). The only problem is that it lasted a long time. Sasha’s condition was different though. High temperatures in the beginning, but the illness quickly disappeared.

Sasha: In my case, it started with a common cold, then the whole body began to ache. I came back from training and it felt like someone was breaking all my bones from the inside. Then, body temperature began to rise. The maximum was over 39. I immediately took antibiotics. The state itself was unpleasant - you go to the kitchen, or to the bathroom and you are already very tired. You also hear how you breathe.

Sasha, I looked at your Instagram and came to the conclusion that you love black and white tones. Why is that?

Sasha: In black and white, there is...

Vanya: Magic.

Sasha: Yes, some kind of charm. Many photographs look better in black and white. I like the lines and shadows.

Do you hear from fans a lot?

Sasha: Very much! Just yesterday, one fan gave gifts through the coaches. She loves our group very much, follows us to all competitions. From my understanding, she is not alone. It is just her who communicates with us. I called for a photo session, but unfortunately, this has not yet happened because of the virus situation. But yes, they write a lot! They post stories, write long messages. Sometimes I read and tears come, people give a lot of themselves. You think how this is possible. Many are busy with family and work, but they take time for us.

Vanya: Most of the times, they post our reactions to performances. This has already become a meme! We have been compared to animals. Sasha recently reposted a picture where I am a dog who smiles, and she is a serious cat. In many shots, myself and Irina Vasilievna (Zhuk) are explosive, and Sasha and Alexander Vasilievich (Svinin) are more restrained. It’s cool and funny!

Does this reflect your nature?

Vanya: I’m probably more emotional after performances. I keep everything to myself so much that it just breaks at the end. Sasha, on the other hand, gives so much to the performances and at the end, she has nothing left.

Are you offended by any comments?

Vanya: Some comments are very interesting. There have certainly been times where I wanted to respond, but realized that it was pointless. It is nonsense.

Sasha: Because you will be invested in it.

Vanya: Now, I laugh at such comments. If a person doesn't like something and expresses their opinion, please, especially if it is really constructive criticism. When you see that this is not the first time a person has written, and really understands figure skating, you can listen to this... But there are some that just write for the sake of saying something.

Sasha: Yes, there are some who throw out unnecessary emotions based on nothing.

Has it ever happened that thanks to a person's comment, you changed something in your performance?

Vanya: A couple of times.

Sasha: It is not with regards to steps and technical issues though. Most comments are like “I want power, brightness.” At such moments, you can reconsider and decide that, indeed, something is missing somewhere.

It happens that unpleasant things are written by fans of other teams.

Vanya: I'm okay with this, but if you like another couple, why are you writing under our post? Go to your guys and write good things.

Sasha, you are sometimes compared to Victoria Sinitsina? Are you okay with this?

Sasha: Yes, absolutely! We sometimes laugh about our similarities. We also have common views on wardrobe sometimes.

What about the comments that you and Vanya would make a good pair in real life?

Sasha: It's fun too.

Vanya: On one hand, that is a compliment because it means that we can show real emotions on the ice. People believe in our story and think that we are also together behind the scenes... But we have already said many times that we are not a couple in real life, so it is quite strange when people ask about this.

Sasha: It's very cute though!

Vanya: Those who have been with us for a long time know that we are not together, but our fans really want us to be together.

Do you follow the situation regarding Russia's two-year sentence? You guys already had some bad experiences in the past with this decision.

Sasha: Yes, we heard this news. As far as I understand, the consequences could be much worse - all athletes from Russia could be expelled indiscriminately. They could say, "Russia, goodbye." But we are still allowed to compete. Let it be without the anthem at the World Championships and the Olympics, but on our form, the name of the country can still be written. This is already pleasant for us. I do not know all the little details, but in this situation, I want to find something positive.

Vanya: Of course, we are upset, because this is our country. We would very much like to perform with the flag and anthem. But the decision has been made, and nothing can be done. We will calmly prepare for all the major competitions. It remains to be seen how athletes will be admitted to the Olympics.

What would you change in ice dance to make it more popular?

Vanya: Ice Dance is a very creative sport. Everything should look simple, easy, and unpredictable with us. In my opinion, to make our sport more popular, teams must be given more freedom for creativity. Then, the couples will not be alike. We have many rules that do not allow us to go beyond.

Sasha: In general, the rules are made for judges. Previously, ice dance judging was based on "like it or not like it."

Do you have long-term career plans?

Vanya: This season has shown that it is difficult to plan the future. We have decided to live day by day, and prepare for specific events. There have been many times where we plan a lot, and in the end, the plan does not come true.

Do you think about life after sports?

Sasha: I do not have any serious thoughts. Maybe participate in shows, but there are no specific plans. However, I can definitely say that I want to stay in figure skating and take a new role in the sport. For now, we still have a lot to accomplish. We have just reached the top level. We have just started receiving recognition from the audience.

Vanya: And we are very grateful to our fans. When new broke out that we were sick, many wrote to us and supported us. It is really motivating!

Do you have plans for the New Year holidays?

Sasha: I would like to go to the skating rink in front of the Red Square. I have never been to massive street skating rinks, so I want to feel this atmosphere.

Vanya: Oh cool! Let's go and invite everyone!

A small wish to your fans at the end of the interview?

Sasha: Health and love. Be happy no matter what. Live everyday.

Vanya: To make all your dreams come true in the New Year.

#MY BABIES ❤️#Stepanova Bukin #Alexandra Stepanova #Ivan Bukin #Figure Skating #Ice Dance #Dance #Skating #Sports #Arts #Interview #Partnership #Love #Life

117 notes · View notes

youngbugandtonystank · 4 years

Note

I was wondering if I'm the only one who gets irritated when certain articles or movie reviewers on YT refer to Tony and Peter's relationship as one of "mentor and mentee"? While this is true, I feel like addressing them as mentor & mentee makes their relationship solely professional. Like, all Tony cares about is Spiderman and training him to be a better superhero. I get really angry when people interpret things like that and eliminate the personal connection between them. (1)

(2) Some also interpret Happy's words in FFH "Tony wouldn't have done what he did if he didn't know that you're going to be here after he was gone" as if Tony wanted to make sure that Spiderman was alive, so there will be someone to keep the world safe and continue his legacy as a superhero. Again, there is truth in this but I doubt Tony cared about Spiderman when he invented time travel. To me, he wanted to bring back Peter and for no other reason but because he loved him as a son.

(3) Could you please elaborate on this and point out why Tony and Peter shared more of a father/son relationship rather than purely teacher/student one. I love that in a recent post you talked about how Peter's goodbye to Tony was not the typical mentee goodbye. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on this because to me, Peter was clearly saying goodbye to a father figure. He was almost begging him to hold on, to not leave them, etc. Thank you in advance!

Hi!

I know what you mean, I hate it when they do that too.

Before this, we need to see the difference between the three concepts Peter means to Tony:

1. Mentee: is a person who is being mentored.

(’What we discussed. Keep your distance. Web 'em up.’)

(’Stay close to the ground. Build up your game helping little people, like that lady that bought you the churro.’)

(’Don’t do anything I would do, and definitely don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. There’s a... There’s a little grey area in there, and that’s where you operate.’)

Haha, even at this stage Tony congratulated Peter like three times the same day lmao

Peter Parker: Hey, everyone.Tony Stark: . . . Good job.

Tony Stark: Nice job, kid.Peter Parker: Thanks.

Peter Parker: What?Tony Stark: You did a good job. Stay down.

Tony Stark: I wanted to tell you what an incredible job your nephew did this weekend at the Stark internship retreat. Everyone was impressed.

The pattern of telling Peter that he did a great job constantly is something Tony wanted from his father and from there, you can tell he’s already entering the parental territory even if he was just the mentor at that time.

Protegé: is a person guided and protected by a more prominent person, their relationship is mutual.

(’I did listen, kid. Who do you think called the FBI, huh? Do you know that I was the only one who believed in you?’)

(’it’s never too early to start thinking about college. I got some pull at MIT.’)

(’You know what? He actually made a really mature choice. It just surprised the heck out of us.’)

Son-figure/Pseudo-son: one who can identify on a deeply psychological level and who generates emotions generally felt towards one's father. A person who looks up to someone older and treats them like a father.

(’What if somebody had died tonight? Different story, right? ‘Cause that’s on you. And if you died, I feel like that’s on me.’)

(’I wanted you to be better.’ ‘Pete, you gotta let go. I'm gonna catch you.’)

(’My dad never really gave me a lot of support... And I’m just trying to break the cycle of shame.’)

(’But it was such a long way down and I just thought about you on the way...’)

Peter Parker: Hey, man. What's up, Mr. Stark?Tony Stark: Kid, where'd you come from?Peter Parker: Field trip to MoMA.

Peter is all of the above. He went through those with Tony and their relationship developed into father-son territory.

For me, it’s easy to tell that they have a father-son relationship by just looking at the same scene you mentioned; Tony’s death.

Think about it, Pepper has been in Tony’s life for around 10 years and Rhodey has been in his life since he was 15 and the fact that Peter is within the circle of people to say goodbye to him personally means a lot. The directors picked Peter, Pepper, and Rhodey to create an emotional goodbye to Tony, with the people who are closest to him. Peter is one of them, I don’t think a simple mentee would get that privilege. If Peter was just the mentee in Tony’s life he would’ve gotten this type of goodbye:

Far away and keeping distance. But Peter got the close contact, Rhodey even gave Peter time with Tony and Pepper even helped Peter up. That looks like a family dynamic.

I don’t if you read my comparison between Harley and Peter but if Peter was playing only the mentee part he would’ve been in Harley’s position. Tony and Harley probably kept contact through text messages and emails. He was invited to the funeral and stood very far away from Tony’s inner circle. Harley could’ve easily gotten an internship just like Peter since the kid is also smart and Tony could’ve said something about him in the movies but not once was this kid mentioned. This is because Harley is more like a ‘part-of-the-legacy’ kid of the generation that Tony appreciates than a pseudo-son.

A simple mentee wouldn’t get the treatment Peter got:

I think some people really think EDITH is just a normal A.I. or some pair of technological glasses lol no. EDITH can and is:

Tony’s security and defense system.

Tony’s most powerful artificial tactical intelligence.

Gives access to Stark Industries' global satellite network. The entire Stark global security network.

Stark Industries’ arsenal of missiles and drones.

Back door to all major telecommunication networks.

Capable of hacking into nearly any computerized device.

Is programmed to have Peter Parker as the only authorized user.

Stark Industries' weaponry.

Is the user interface to the entire Stark Industries network.

Tony basically gave him his legacy and his company there. A mentee wouldn’t get that responsibility. Why not give the glasses to Rhodey; an officer with the United States Air Force and liaison between the military in the Department of Acquisitions and Stark Industries; an actual aerospace engineer and Tony’s best friend? Why not leave that to Pepper; the CEO of his company and wife? Or Happy, his head of security and one of his best friends? In terms of the company, Peter now has almost the same power as Pepper. Almost.

He gave that to Peter because he trusted him and loved him as a son, someone worthy of carrying his legacy.

Many wanted Tony to leave Peter money or something fancy, but the truth is, what’s really more important and personal than a man’s entire legacy and trust? Nothing. Not even money. Also, who’s to say he didn’t leave money too? We’ll find out in the next movie, who knows, maybe he left something else too.

Let’s also remember EDITH wasn’t just a pair of glasses before, she was just like JARVIS or FRIDAY but Tony decided to upload her system in the glasses.

More proof of this is Peter being able to call Happy and ask him to go to an entirely different continent to pick him up in a private jet where Happy not only helps Peter with his injuries and lets Peter use Tony’s technology like nobody’s business but also assures him that Tony did everything he did in Endgame for him. This is not the treatment a mentee gets.

Even in Ant-Man, Hank Pym gave his protegé Darren great power in their relationship because and I quote: ‘I thought I saw something in him, a son I never had perhaps.’

Even if their stories are different, Pym mentions he saw a lot of himself

Darren Cross:All those years ago, you picked me. What did you see in me?

Hank Pym:I saw myself.

Darren Cross:Then why did you push me away?

Hank Pym:Because I saw too much of myself.

Some mentees and protegés are meant to evolve into something more and this is what happened with Tony and Peter. I don’t think they thought their relationship would get to the point it got but it did.

Directors, producers, actors, and actresses have said it before and the only ones who can’t accept the fact are either tony antis, comic book super fans or fans of the first spiderman movies. Other people can clearly see their relationship for what it is.

There’s one thing I really hated before FFH came out, actually even before Endgame came out; many were already replacing Tony as Peter’s father figure and were guessing who was going to be the next one in line. They were nominating Doctor Strange, Happy or Fury as if being a father figure is something superficial and exchangeable. And you want to know why they were already replacing him? Nope, it’s not because Tony was going to die, at that time nobody knew that, it’s because it was stated before that RDJ was not going to participate in FFH. That’s the only reason. I get it, Peter had two father figures and he lost his biological dad but that doesn’t mean Peter sees every single male out there as a father figure, sure he can get attached because he’s a kid but he doesn’t love them the way he loved/loves Ben and Tony.

Thnx!♥

I also know I have other asks in my inbox and I promise I’ll get to them as soon as possible.

#tony stark #peter parker #irondad #spiderson #endgame #far from home #tom holland #robert downey jr #marvel #mcu

142 notes · View notes

script-a-world · 4 years

Note

(sorry this is long) I'm creating a fantasy matriarchal society that's a combination of like America post WW2 and like the amazons/valkyries crossed with magical girls. I could use some help figuring out the gender dynamics, since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them. I'm trying to figure out if it's better to have the men be primary caregivers (1/?)

since there’s no reason to assume that the gender that gives birth has to be the caregivers) or if I should go the “matriarchal society would value childrearing above other jobs” route. Some thoughts I had: Women are the main magic-users in society (magical girl/amazons blessed directly by the god who rules the city with power)and that perhaps all young women are expected to go through military service of some sort before becoming matrons, politicians and doctors. (2/?)

Maybe women are associated with Life and Death and “important duties” that revolve around them, including duties regarding both killing and saving lives. So healing, leading armies, fighting, hunting, childbirth (possibly care?) and politics are feminine jobs, while “lesser duties” that revolve more around menial labor are relegated to men (manual labor, maintenance, ‘uneducated’ jobs, support jobs like scribe and secretary, cooking, cleaning, perhaps some jobs like fashion design or art). (3/?)

Do you think this is a good balance? What are some other ways I could divide gender roles? The world situation is a magical land with about early 20th century level tech (trains and private schools and like phones/radios).Also, what is the best way to objectify men in this society? I was thinking of making it so men are seen as useless/only for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure and siring children to women. (4/?)

They don’t’ actually create children or take the ‘important jobs’ (the poor dears just don’t have the brains for it, they’re too simple and direct, men don’t have the emotional maturity to handle serious issues, they lack empathy, they only want sex anyway so it’s not like you need to worry about their emotional needs, etc). I’d love some suggestions on how a society like this might work or if there are other ways to divide the gender roles, (5/?)

as well as some ways men might experience objectification in society. How would fashion be different, and how would this society put pressure on men to look or act in certain ways (and women as well). Any suggestions? Thanks, and sorry for the long question(6/?)

Mod Miri Note: If you have a question that requires multiple asks, please use the google form! That way there’s no risk of parts of the question being lost.

Tex: “Do you think this is a good balance?” No, I do not. I disagree with the notion that a group of people ought to be objectified, neglected, abused, pigeon-holed, or otherwise mistreated under the guise of inversion as a way to tout a certain prescription of thought. I think this methodology perpetuates stereotypes, and with stereotypes come all the -isms that are used as excuses to treat people poorly just because they’re different from the originating group.

I’m going to be radical and say “none of the above”. There’s a few reasons for my answer, but aside from the brief overview in the previous paragraph, let me go through and try responding to all of your points in a more precise manner.

Let’s start with American culture post WWII - and I’m going to assume that, because of this choice, you’re working from an American perspective. This is important! But I’ll handle that detail in a bit.

Post-WWII culture is heavily influenced by WWII culture. For women, this meant enlistment in the military, as well as filling the gaps in the domestic labor force left by men being shipped off (History.com, The Atlantic). Their service in the military - quite often voluntary - was as critical and crucial as their domestic work (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2, Wikipedia 3). They usually received lower pay than men, true (though interestingly the women in the UK were often treated better; Striking Women), though governments of the time admitted that without women the war effort would have crumpled.

Rosie the Riveter is a popular piece of propaganda (where it was also considered patriotic for women to join the workforce and military service; National Women’s History Museum), but don’t let that dissuade you from thinking that women were not recognized for other types of work during the war. Many women in the US were recognized for their military service (USO), and other women’s histories endure today - Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Wikipedia), Vitka Kempner (Wikipedia), and Virginia Hall (Wikipedia). I’m going to toss in the official synopsis of Queen Elizabeth II’s involvement in her own military to round things out (The Royal Family), complete with a picture of her in uniform (Wikipedia).

Many women after the war went back to strictly domestic duties, and I think that parallels their wartime efforts - both situations are of the “all hands on deck” type, but the play of gender roles here means that the duties of a functioning society are divvied up by different functional spheres - and make no mistake, men and women relied on each other equally as much to cover the gaps, despite the sexism inherent in modern Western society. The difference between war and non-war time cultures was that the latter wasn’t necessarily cultivated by patriotism that could unite the different “factions”. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History gives a thorough examination of this topic.

The following era - typified by the birth of the Baby Boomer generation - saw a marked increase in economic prosperity (Wikipedia). With that came increased social mobility for women (Citation 1), usually catalyzed by the actions of their fathers (Citation 2). This may typically be achieved by consistent, conscientious public policy formation (Citation 3). In short, many cultures - if they haven’t already - are realizing that it’s good for business to let women control how they participate in society and the flow of money.

In the US, this was precipitated by the boom of social development (American History; archived version). Aside from the Truman administration negotiating price fixing to prevent inflation, a significant factor was the passing of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill). This primarily benefited the Greatest Generation, though other pertinent legislation by the 79th Congress benefited the Silent Generation onwards: the Fair Deal, Revenue Act of 1948, Taft-Hartley Act, Employment Act of 1946, National School Lunch Act, and Hobbs Act.

It’s debatable how well this impacted long-term economic development, considering the almost immediate rise of McCarthyism in the US in 1947, which was heavily intertwined with the Truman Doctrine that precipitated the Cold War. The results of the war, at least economically, were… mixed (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2). I have no doubt that this impacted the social mobility of women in all affected countries - which is all of them, but I’m sure hairs could be split on this if you wish.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s tackle the Amazons.

The modern, popular interpretation (that is slow to be shaken by archaeological evidence) is mostly mythological (Wikipedia). While some ideas are thrown in the way of a Minoan Crete ancestry to the myth, there are more similarities drawn to the Scythian and Samartian cultures on the Eurasian Steppe (CNET). It’s possible that instead of the equally-extreme pole end of the gender dichotomy that is patriarchy-matriarchy, the Scythians just scandalized the Athenians with a comparatively more fluid society (Smithsonian Magazine).

As for Valkyries… there’s been a revival of them in pop culture, probably as a net-casting to see what’s out there aside from Amazons. TVTropes covers the many, many ways media utilizes them as a trope, to varying degrees of mythological and cultural accuracy. As they state, valkyries are a form of psychopomp, as they decide who among the battlefield’s dead will go to Valhalla (ruled by Odin) or Fólkvangr (ruled by Freya). Freya seems to have assumed the “type” (as opposed to characteristics salient to a particular individual) of a valkyrie, as the female counterpart the warrior archetype. To wit, Freya herself may be a type (Wikipedia).

Here’s where the issue gets thorny - modern popular understanding of valkyries, and by extension Scandinavian women, is skewed through the modern lens.

@fjorn-the-skald has a lovely series called Viking History: Post-by-Post, or An Informal Crash Course & A Historical Guide to the Vikings, that typically focuses on medieval Iceland. In his post “Lesson 13.c - Women in the Viking Age, Part III: Were Women “Vikings”?”, discusses the particular penchant of modern times to romanticize and/or skew history to their own biases - in this instance, how medieval Icelandic women functioned in their culture, as well as how valkyrie myths play into this.

The TL;DR of that is: “viking” women were a societal anomaly, the battlefield was a male domain (and they were expected to die on it), a woman’s prowess of the domestic sphere was highly respected to a level often equivalent to men, and the domestic sphere was the sphere of commerce. Scandinavian culture prized strong women, just as they prized strong men, and their culture rested upon the concept of different genders having their own distinct, complementary, and equal domains.

Fjörn builds upon this history in an ask about gender roles outside the usual dichotomy of male-female. Valkyries, and shield-maidens, may be classed as a third gender in medieval Scandinavian culture, because women were temporarily occupying the male role in their society. While valkyries are of divine origin, shield-maidens are not, though they seem to have taken on a supernatural bent by performing feminine qualities while living in the male sphere (something that they can literally wear, by the donning of their armor).

That probably comes across as distasteful to, especially, a modern American perspective, but many ancient cultures are like that. There’s a footnote on that ask about links to a contemporary perspective of same-sex relationships, as well, to round out that talking point.

With those historical and mythological details discussed, let’s move on to magical girls.

Interestingly, the genre and trope derive from the American TV show Bewitched (Nippon.com). Its evolution reflected Japan’s changing tone about female sexuality, focusing on girls. Magical Girl doesn’t seem to be intended to attract the male gaze in a sexual light - and in fact was generated as a form of female empowerment by by way of growing up (TVTropes), but it seems to happen anyways (TVTropes).

Magical girls, as a genre, originated in the 1960s - the archetypical Sailor Moon encompasses not only magical girls, but also the kawaii aesthetic. Kawaii, incidentally, followed after the magical girl trope, and plays upon women performing as girls in society.

As magical girls are intended for young girls, a demographic known as shōjo, it is considered a subgenre of the target audience. Please note that shōnen'ai (Fanlore) and yaoi (Fanlore) are also subgenres of shōjo.

For some context, the adult female target audience is known as josei, the young adult men is known as shōnen, and adult male audience is known as seinen. Many manga and anime are often misattributed to the wrong category, so it helps to know which is which, and why.

Kumiko Saito argues (through an unfortunately paywalled article that I’m more than willing to disseminate to those without JSTOR access) that magical girls reinforce gender stereotypes as well as fetishize young female bodies. She argues this point more eloquently than I can, so I’ll be quoting a few sections below.

Page 148 (7 of 23 on the PDF):

The 1960s “witch” housewife theme waned quickly in the United States, but various cultural symbolisms of magic smoothly translated into the Japanese climate, leading to Japans four-decade-long obsession with the magical girl. Bewitched incorporated the concept of magic as female power to be renounced after marriage, thereby providing “a discursive site in which feminism (as female power) and femininity has been negotiated” (Moseley 2002, 403) in the dawning of Americas feminist era. Japans magical girls represented a similar impasse of fitting into female domesticity, continued to fascinate Japanese society, and came to define the magical girl genre. In direct contrast to the American heroines Samantha and Jeannie, however, whose strife arose from the antagonism between magic (as power) and the traditional gender role as wife or fiancée, the magical girls dilemma usually lies between female adulthood and the juvenile female stage prior to marriage, called shõjo. In other words, the magical girl narratives often revolve around the magical freedom of adolescence prior to the gendered stage of marriage and motherhood, suggesting the difficulty of imagining elements of power and defiance beyond the point of marriage. In fact, these programs were broadcast exactly when the rate of love-based marriage started to surpass that of miai (arranged marriage),4 which implies that the magical girl anime, founded on the strict ideological division between shõjo and wife/mother, may have been an anxious reaction to the emergent phase of romance.

Page 150 (9 of 23 on the PDF):

The combination of magical empowerment and shõjo-ness framed by the doomed nature of transient girlhood naturally created ambivalent, messages in Akko-chan as well. In the societal milieu in which Japan was undergoing the politically turbulent era of Marxist student movements at the largest scale in the postwar era, Akko-chan’s super- human ability to transform into anyone (or anything) is quite revolutionary, implying a sense of women’s liberation. Despite this potential, her metamorphic ability never threatens gender models, as she typically dreams of becoming a princess, a bride, or a female teacher she respects. The use of magic is also largely limited to humanitarian community services in town. Akko-chan’s symbolic task throughout the series focuses on how to steer her power to serve her friends and family, leading to the final episode in which she relinquishes magic to save her father. Akko-chan embraces the cross-generic mismatch between the radical idea of empowering a girl with superhuman ability and the hahamono [mother genre] sentimentalism idealizing women’s self-sacrifice. All in all, the new setting adopted in this series, that a mediocre girl accidentally gains magic, became a useful mechanism for the underlying theme that the heroine is foredoomed to say farewell to magic in the end. This rhetorical device transforms latent power of the amorphous girl into the reappreciation of traditional gender norms by equating magic with shõjo-hood to be given up at a certain stage.

Saito discusses the thematic shifts in the magical girl subgenre in the 1980s to a more sexualized view, and the according rise of both an older audience and otaku fans, the latter of whom, she clarifies, make a habit of recontextualizing canon to categorize characters into stereotypes that are stripped of the majority of their original context.

On pages 153-154 (12-13 of 23 on the PDF):

The conventions of the magical girl genre transformed significantly against this paradigm shift. Both Minky Momo and Creamy Mami originally targeted children, recording a decent outcome in business and eventually leading to the revival of the genre. Because the plots are directly built on the genre clichés, however, the jokes and sarcasm of many episodes appear comprehensible only to adult viewers equipped with the knowledge of the Töei magical girls. The intrigue of these programs largely lies in the way they parody and mock the established genre conventions, especially the restrictive function of magic and the meaning of transformation. The genre is now founded on the expectation that the adult viewer has acquired a diachronic fan perspective to fetishize both the characters and the text’s meanings.

Creamy Mami presents the story of fourth-grader Yū, who gains magical power that enables her to turn into a sixteen-year-old girl. Yū’s magical power is more restrictive than Momo’s, for her superhuman capacity simply means metamorphosis into her adult form, who happens to become an idol singer called Mami. Given that the magic’s ability is self-oriented cosmetic effect and bodily maturation, the heroine’s ultimate goal by means of magic is to grow old enough to attract her male friend Toshio, who neglects Yū’s latent charm but falls in love with the idol Mami. The series concludes when Yū loses her magic, which correlates to Toshio’s realization that Yū is his real love. Mami’s thematic messages teach the idea that magic does not bring much advantage or power after all, or rather, magic serves as an obstacle for the appreciation of the truly magical period called shõjo. The heroine gains magic to prove, although retroactively, the importance of adolescence preceding the possession of “magic” that enables (and forces) female maturation.

It’s noted in the article that the 1990s-2000s period received criticism for showing a physical maturation of girls, so codified euphemisms via garment changes such as additional frills and curled hair were used instead. This “third-wave” magical girl challenged standing norms of its predecessors by doing things such as likening adult responsibilities (“childrearing and job training”) as a sort of game, as well as the transformation implying that the character’s power is in being herself, something that juxtaposes previous norms.

Due to shifting power dynamics and other changes in Japan’s culture, it became more common for boys to become magical girls as well, further separating the magical girl concept from a strict reflection of gender roles. As such, Japanese culture - insofar as my English-based research can guide me - no longer immediately implies a direct and distinct correlation between magical girls and the female gender.

An analysis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (PMMM) by Tate James (2017; PDF) discusses an additional dimension of the magical girl genre. Two pertinent points of the piece is that 1.) PMMM dismantles archetypes pitting women against girls, and 2.) PMMM reinforces the gender stereotype that the best type of girl is a passive girl.

Now for the issue you’ve raised about who ought to be the primary caregiver of children.

Consistent, immediate, and continuous interaction between a mother and her child benefits both of them (Citation 4, Scientific American 1, Live Science, Citation 5, Scientific American 2, UNICEF, WHO). Mothers have a distinct neurobiological makeup that predisposes them toward caring for infants (Citation 6), and likewise infants have a predisposed preference to their mother’s voice and heartbeat (Citation 7). I would like to think that is sufficient evidence as to why nearly all cultures encourage mothers as the primary caregivers.

This said, cultivation of a father-child dyad is immensely beneficial to the child (Citation 8, Citation 9), and can alleviate the effect of maternal depression on the child (ScienceDaily). Partnered men residing with children have lower levels of testosterone but a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and adiposity (Citation 10). It’s interesting to note that higher prolactin levels in the mother’s breastmilk has a correspondingly higher level of sociosexual activity with their partner in cotton-top tamarins, which stimulates pair bonding (Citation 11), as well as in other species (Citation 12).

Paternal postpartum depression is recently recognized in fathers, to severe and reverberating deleterious effects on themselves and their family (Citation 13). Screening tools for detecting depression in Swedish fathers is not sufficiently developed, and many men may be passed over despite reaching cut-off suggestions in other criteria for depression (Citation 14).

It has been observed that while human mother and fathers have the similar oxytocin pathways, the exhibit different parenting behaviours when exposed to elevated levels of oxytocin - primarily that fathers will react with high stimulatory behaviour and exploratory play (Wikipedia).

Men being socialized in a culture of stoicism and an encouraged reaction pattern to violence have poor mental health that can culminate into death and other long-term effects (Citation 15). Suicide in the US is currently the leading cause of death at time of posting this response, that the total suicide rate increased 31% from 2001-2017, and in 2017 male rates were nearly four times higher than females (NIMH).

On the topic of magical culture: it’s incredibly difficult to research because it’s a component of overall culture, and one that’s not typically available to strangers/foreigners/the uninitiated. As such, a lot of authors default to what they already know. It’s not a bad thing, but if someone wants to reach outside their comfort zone, they’re going to have some trouble.

I’m going to go off the three, four-ish, cultures you’ve already come to us with: American, Scandinavian, Scythian/Samartian, and Japanese just to round things out.

For a very, very rough overview of America, we have:

Native Americans of the contiguous US

Hawai’i

Alaska

Whatever the colonizing peoples brought over (including, but not limited to, English, Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, German, and Italian)

Whatever the myriad cultures of Africa brought over as slaves

Hispanic

NB: I’ve put Hawai’i and Alaska as separate items because they’re not part of the contiguous US.

European settlers were of a few groups:

The merchants working on charters

Indentured servants from the merchants’ homelands

Slavs

Immigrants in post-colonial eras

This is an important distinction because 1.) contemporary culture matters a lot politically, 2.) how people came to the US determined how they and their family were treated, and 3.) the contemporary job culture determined their social class.

(Slavs, as a note, are the origin of the English word “slave”, something that Western Europeans historically liked to propagate.)

I’m not going to go into the details of everything the US has to offer in terms of cultural diversity aside from a nudge in the direction of Santería. What you pick up to research is up to you.

Scandinavian folk magic is known as “trolldom” (Swedish-language Wikipedia), and the region was known for their cunningfolk. Please note that klok/-a, klog/-e, and related words relates to the English word cloak, and these people are so named because wearing one was an integral part of how they interacted with the supernatural.

The InternetArchive has a book (albeit in Swedish) about the history of magic in Sweden, which is available in multiple formats. If you’d prefer to have something in English, you can either buy this book, or inform your library you’d like to them to buy it for you.

I’m a little surprised you hadn’t mentioned either the völva (Swedish Wikipedia, English Wikipedia) or seiðr (Wikipedia), as they’re quite a well-known part of Scandinavian folk culture. Fjörn, as always, is my first stop for this area of research, with the post “Lesson 7 - Viking Spirituality”, the Víkingabók Database, the tag of Old Norse words, and the post “Norðurbók: A List of the Tales and Sagas of Icelanders” as incredibly good starting points. I encourage you to peruse them, especially because the words you learn will help you be more precise during research.

The Scythian culture is quite far reaching, as they had occupied most of the Eurasian Steppe during the Iron Age, and much of this area can be found in modern-day countries such as Russia, Iran, and China, among others. Because of how far their peoples spread out, the Scythians intermixed with their neighbors, and as such there are sub-groups to the culture.

The Sarmatians were more Russian, as that’s where a large amount of their territory laid, and were absorbed into early Slavic culture. Both their and the overall Scythian language group is eastern Iranian.

In order to help you orient yourself, here’s a map from Wikipedia:

Description: Historical spread of Iranian peoples/languages: Scythia, Sarmatia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire in about 170 BC (evidently before the Yuezhi invaded Bactria). Modern political boundaries are shown to facilitate orientation.

Japanese magical culture is intrinsically tied to their religion, and as such it would be beneficial to read about Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. The wiki for Japanese mythology is a thorough primer, though if you get stuck, then I’m sure @scriptmyth would be glad to help you on not only this culture, but others.

As for the jobs you’ve proposed - I’m going to jump right into scribes because the irony of that is it’s historically a male-dominated job, and is the progenitor of jobs such as “public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers”. It is, with even greater irony, European women that are noted in Wikipedia, and that medieval women are increasingly thought to have played an integral part in manuscript writing (New Scientist, Science Advances).

I’m not the best person to ask for medieval culture, unfortunately, so you’ll need someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject to direct you to the finer points.

The wiki for women in war links to a lot of lists, so I would suggest poking around for historical references by era (that will likely lead to by culture) to orient yourself on how women have participated in war in the past. There’s quite a bit of mythology to be found there, as well, so if you pick up some specific goddesses you get stuck on, then pop over to @scriptmyth.

Likewise, the wiki for women in government is an interesting read, as is women in positions of power. Since both are primarily modern-times oriented, I would suggest looking at the list of queens regnant for a more historical perspective. I would have difficulty giving you more than that, as you would need to pinpoint your reference cultures first.

As history often neglects women’s contributions to society if they weren’t a ruler or similarly powerful ruler - and, frankly, that frequently applied to men as well the further back you go - I’m going to toss a couple of starting points at you for the area of medicine:

Women in medicine § Ancient medicine - Wikipedia

Women in medicine - Science Museum: History of Medicine

One thing to keep in mind is that as goalposts changed for medicine - the standardization of knowledge and the need to attend a medical school to be legally allowed to perform medicine - the availability of women to participate went down.

Another is that medicine, historically, relied upon herbal medicine, and Wikipedia itself notes that there’s a heavy overlap with food history - something that’s traditionally a domain of women. This abstract by Marcia Ramos‐e‐Silva MD, PhD, talks about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, and the first page available tells you that medieval women were in charge of quite a lot despite not being allowed to participate in the male-dominated sphere of war. The Herbal Academy dips briefly into not only the saint, but other historical aspects of herbalism that might interest you.

The wiki of women in the Middle Ages, along with that of Hildegard of Bingen, nicely rounds out this particular topic.

I need to bring out the fact that Ancient Egypt was and is well-known for the equality and respect afforded to their women - in the interest of staying on subject, particularly in the field of medicine (Ancient History Encyclopedia). Isis was well-known as a goddess of healing (Wikipedia), an aspect she has in common with goddesses in many other cultures (Wikipedia). As an added side-note, Merit Ptah in her popularly-known context has been concluded to be an inflated misunderstanding - and misconstrued interpretation - of a historical figure with significant fabrication (LiveScience, Oxford).

The presence of women in medicine fluctuated in every culture, an in ancient times often shared some correlation with the use of magic (Citation 16). Healing, historically, has a high correlation with the supernatural - and if you care to look, women are usually responsible for the domain of the supernatural. (Or at least the feminine part, which was complementary and complemented by the masculine part.)

I’m going to hop back to politics real quick to bring up abbesses, particularly the social power they exercised as women heading religious orders. An article by Alixe Bovey for the British Library gives the TL;DR of medieval women and abbeys, though if you’d like something with a bit more detail, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Eileen Edna Power is also available.

Abbeys, with their rise and fall, are important to modern American culture. Midwives, to be even more particular, have the most direct impact. In Western Europe, a midwife may under certain circumstances perform baptisms. This was a debated topic of its time, as baptisms were rituals of the Church, and the Church had strict regulations allowing only men to perform their rituals.

During the 1500s - and up to the 1800s, in some cases - midwives were defamed to be witches. You’ll notice that this corresponds to a standardization of medical knowledge, with its corresponding legal restrictions on who may practice medicine. For the Church, the politics playing behind the scenes of midwifery and female physicians fluctuated with their observations about women’s power relative to their own (Citation 16).

Malta is an excellent case study of this phenomenon (Citation 17), and encapsulates the movement of witchcraft accusations that took place throughout this period - something historians noted as corresponding to the rise of Protestantism (ThoughtCo). There’s some debate that the increasing orientation to wages in contemporary economy facilitated this adverse behaviour against women, as well as various other social pressures as politically mitigated by the Catholic Church (Wikipedia).

As the practice of medicine was segregated according to sex - male patients to male physicians, female patients to female physicians - there were proportionally fewer men in trades such as midwifery than women despite the medieval shift toward male encroachment of territory (Wikipedia). This corresponding money- and thus male-oriented intrusion into the female sphere of medicine can be seen with the invention of the obstetric forceps (JSTOR). The rising culture of appropriation constituted the witchcraft trials that, incidentally, influenced American culture during their colonization years.

A pertinent name to remember for American history of the witchcraft trials is Margaret Jones, a Puritan midwife and the first person to be accused of witchcraft in the trails taking place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Wikipedia).

The Salem Witch Trials, as an offhand note, could well be an anomaly due to ergotism (Citation 18).

One thing I’m willing to bend on - a little bit - is manual labor, but mostly because you’re describing something very similar to what’s already been invented: corvée labor. There’s plenty of other forms depending on what culture you’re going for, though unlike what you’re proposing, does not necessarily imply the direct and permanent subjugation of people.

I will absolutely quibble with the idea of “uneducated” labor equating to “less valuable” labor - universities offer non-vocational degrees, typically in the areas of research and/or religion, and guilds were created as a means of quality control (that unfortunately got out of hand and committed crimes such as rent-seeking). Women in guilds were a thing, vulnerable to the same fluctuations as their other occupations outside the house.

If we are defining “uneducated” labour as “menial” labour, then this set of occupations inherently varies by culture, as does its relative weight of importance. One example of this would be writing; it may be menial but important, whereas holding negotiations could be a “major” role but wouldn’t exist without the support of workers “less than” them.

Correspondingly, gender divisions may not necessarily mean an assignation of “lesser” or “greater” when compared against each other. In medieval Europe, at least, the creation of textiles was split along the general lines of spinning and weaving. Women held the former (hence “spinster”), and men held the latter. Spinning was often not formalized into guilds then, but it was an important cornerstone of the economy that could support entire families. A guest post on The Freelance History Writer’s blog seems to indicate that this gender division was due to influence by the Bible, which seems to corroborate with the history of both professions as detailed on Wikipedia - the further back we go, and also the less connected to Christianity, the more textile work women presided over. This granted them greater control over their presence in society, since the selling of textiles was useful leverage to support themselves and others.

A similar discrepancy can be found with agriculture. Hamer women in Ethiopia are traditionally the one to cultivate sorghum, a cornerstone crop to their diet, and they exhibit preferences in which varieties they grow according to criteria such as which is easiest to grind and long-term storage feasibility (Citation 19). Accordingly, there’s been an increasing orientation around the growing of crops rather than the pastoralist habits of their men, with trading standards occuring at one goat for one Dore (“pile of maize or sorghum”) (Citation 19).

A study examining the male sphere of hunting within a society discusses the various cultural implications of defendable vs non-defendable meat sharing, with respect to how the meat is distributed and its corresponding social range (e.g. immediate social circle vs entire community), something I find interesting given that the kilocalories obtained from meat is roughly equal to that of the female sphere-acquired agriculture/gathering (Citation 20). The division of labour along gender lines when it comes to food flow in a community seems, historically, to be both comparable and compatible to each other - a recurring theme with many of the topics I’ve already covered.

Gender roles in their historical perspective - especially the further back you go - are often complimentary to each other, and are an economical way to divide up the burden of maintaining a society to a functional level. There are plenty of exceptions to this (see: third genders), as well, and many cultures exhibit the idea that a productive person is good for society; their roles may look a little different from the person next to them, and not only is the work considered equal in terms of importance, but also with a bit of poking around, you’ll find that few cultures have harsh punishments for anyone “stepping outside” their predicted roles.

Men are already objectified plenty. That their treatment by society looks different than women’s, or other genders, is by no means an excuse to sweep things under the room and pretend that they have it best - or worse, purposefully ostracize them in a fictional work to further mock, ridicule, and isolate them. This contributes to the societal issues in your culture that you wish to address, and stems from a uniquely pervasive perspective from modern American culture that differs from many other cultures in the world.

TL;DR - The way you wish to objectify men is already being done, especially in American culture. It is harmful, and will have an impact that will reach further than you might anticipate. This approach is counterproductive to your goals, and the cultures/media you cite either directly contradict your beliefs of said sources or otherwise undermine your beliefs. It is vastly more productive to take a deeper look at the origins of the issues you wish to address in your writing, as well as the reference material that you wish to use. Learning perspectives outside your native culture will benefit you immensely, and the results could surprise you.

Citations

Citation 1 - PDF - Doepke, M., Tertilt, M., Voena, A.. (2012). “The Economics and Politics of Women’s Rights,” Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 339-372, 07.

Citation 2 - PDF - Fernández, R.. (2014). “Women’s rights and development,” Journal of Economic Growth, vol 19(1), pages 37-80.

Citation 3 - PDF - Duflo, E. (2012). “Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: 1051-79.

Citation 4 - PDF - Crenshaw J. T. (2014). “Healthy Birth Practice #6: Keep Mother and Baby Together- It’s Best for Mother, Baby, and Breastfeeding.” The Journal of perinatal education, 23(4), 211–217. doi:10.1891/1058-1243.23.4.211

Citation 5 - Faisal-Cury, A., Bertazzi Levy, R., Kontos, A., Tabb, K., & Matijasevich, A. (2019). “Postpartum bonding at the beginning of the second year of child’s life: the role of postpartum depression and early bonding impairment.” Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 1-7.

Citation 6 - PDF - Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., Swain, J. E., Suwalsky, J. T., … & De Pisapia, N. (2017). “Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(45), E9465-E9473.

Citation 7 - PDF - Webb, A. R., Heller, H. T., Benson, C. B., & Lahav, A. (2015). “Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(10), 3152-3157.

Citation 8 - PDF - Pan, Y., Zhang, D., Liu, Y., Ran, G., & Teng, Z. (2016). “Different effects of paternal and maternal attachment on psychological health among Chinese secondary school students.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(10), 2998-3008.

Citation 9 - PDF - Brown, G. L., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & Neff, C. (2012). “Father involvement, paternal sensitivity, and father-child attachment security in the first 3 years.” Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 26(3), 421–430. doi:10.1037/a0027836

Citation 10 - PDF - Lee T Gettler, Mallika S Sarma, Rieti G Gengo, Rahul C Oka, James J McKenna, Adiposity, CVD risk factors and testosterone: Variation by partnering status and residence with children in US men, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2017, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 67–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox005

Citation 11 - PDF - Snowdon, C. T., & Ziegler, T. E. (2015). “Variation in prolactin is related to variation in sexual behavior and contact affiliation.” PloS one, 10(3), e0120650.

Citation 12 - Hashemian, F., Shafigh, F., & Roohi, E. (2016). “Regulatory role of prolactin in paternal behavior in male parents: A narrative review.” Journal of postgraduate medicine, 62(3), 182–187. doi:10.4103/0022-3859.186389

Citation 13 - PDF - Eddy, B., Poll, V., Whiting, J., & Clevesy, M. (2019). “Forgotten Fathers: Postpartum Depression in Men.” Journal of Family Issues, 40(8), 1001-1017.

Citation 14 - PDF - Psouni, E., Agebjörn, J., & Linder, H. (2017). “Symptoms of depression in Swedish fathers in the postnatal period and development of a screening tool.” Scandinavian journal of psychology, 58(6), 485-496.

Citation 15 - Pappas, S. (2018, January). “APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.” Monitor on Psychology, 50(1).

Citation 16 - PDF - Kontoyannis, M., & Katsetos, C. (2011). “Midwives in early modern Europe (1400-1800).” Health Science Journal, 5(1), 31.

Citation 17 - PDF - Savona-Ventura, C. (1995). “The influence of the Roman Catholic Church on midwifery practice in Malta.” Medical history, 39(1), 18-34.

Citation 18 - PDF - Woolf, Alan. (2000). “Witchcraft or Mycotoxin? The Salem Witch Trials. Journal of toxicology.” Clinical toxicology. 38. 457-60. 10.1081/CLT-100100958.

Citation 19 - PDF - Samuel, T. (2013). “From cattle herding to sedentary agriculture: the role of hamer women in the transition.” African Study Monographs, Suppl. 46: 121–133. [Alternate PDF link]

Citation 20 - PDF - Gurven, Michael & Hill, Kim. (2009). “Why Do Men Hunt?.” Current Anthropology. 50. 51-74. 10.1086/595620.