#oh my god I'd forgotten the 2 Degrees Ad Guy Post

[sixth-light]

I posted 2,059 times in 2022

110 posts created (5%)

1,949 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ilikesallydonovan

@darlingofdots

@raedear

@angualupin

@starfoozle

I tagged 2,036 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#in the queue - 1,241 posts

#wheel of time - 210 posts

#wot book spoilers - 134 posts

#tumblr stuff - 90 posts

#the old guard - 89 posts

#ofmd - 89 posts

#wot tv show - 88 posts

#lgbtqia - 72 posts

#fandom - 69 posts

#fanart - 52 posts

Longest Tag: 134 characters

#and she only asks about food in the context of 'are you having any digestive issues' and monitoring of things like iron and b vitamins

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I am extremely not going to dignify that 'walkable cities ARE ableist actually' post which has crossed my dash with a reblog, but four things to keep in mind:

'Walkable cities' is almost always a shorthand for 'cities which deprioritise cars as a mode of transport and make it possible and enjoyable to travel by other modes instead', rather than a call for everybody to walk and only walk everywhere all of the time. We live in a golden age of micromobility options, for starters. And when most people do not need to use cars, it will be much easier for people who do.

Advocacy for walkable cities and active transport often does slide right into ableism and fatphobia and this needs to be directly challenged whenever it appears (as someone who has been a cycle commuter my whole adult life and overweight for all but five minutes of my whole adult life, if I never hear "if everybody cycled we would solve the '''obesity epidemic'''!!!" again...)

AT THE SAME TIME, while this will change in degree from place to place, the Venn diagram between 'people who advocate for walkable cities' and 'people who advocate for accessible cities' has a significant degree of overlap. There's probably at least one car-centric conservative out there who genuinely advocates for accessibility by the law of averages, but it's neither a coherent nor common position. Walkability IS a form of accessibility. It is not accessibility for everybody but no single kind of accessibility is, which is why we need cities with MULTIPLE kinds.

Therefore, as with goddamn near everything in life, if you actually want to see more accessible cities...advocate for more accessible cities, and what that means for you. Going 'but there are some people who will always need cars therefore walkable cities is ableist' does exactly nothing except turn people off the idea of change. Say what you want to see. Be specific. Imagine better futures. TL;DR - cui bono when we lock ourselves into "cars vs walkability"? you guessed it - people who benefit from the (observably harmful) car-prioritising status quo. so is this assertion always a cynical psy-op? No. Does it function as one in practice? fuck yes. be smarter.

2,024 notes - Posted November 21, 2022

#4

 As of the morning of 17 Jan, local time, regarding the Tonga eruption: even nearby governments have extremely limited information on what has happened/is happening on the ground. Recon flights have not yet launched. The internet is down. There are 36 inhabited islands in Tonga and there has been no confirmed contact with most of them. There has been no formal government-to-government communication. We know there was a volcanic eruption, a tsunami, and significant ashfall following. That’s a good 90% of what’s reliably known. 

The impetus in these circumstances is always to “do something” but the reality is that there is almost nothing anybody outside Tonga can do right now. Quite frankly, if you don’t have a direct personal connection/knowledge I would hold off even on donating to fundraisers until there’s more clarity on what is actually needed and where that help can best come from. (It remains true as with almost all disasters that money is the best and most useful thing you can give; however, given the limited info/lack of contact and how little most people on the internet know about Tonga, this is going to be prime scammer territory.)

A lot of social media content that purports to describe local conditions is likely untrustworthy - there’s only been a few verified videos and images, because of the undersea cable being out of action. RNZ, which has an excellent and very active Pacific bureau, is being very conservative with its reporting because it does not want to promote misinformation. Just...cool your jets on this one for a few more hours or possibly couple of days, everybody. We don’t know what we don’t know. 

2,343 notes - Posted January 17, 2022

#3

I am very pleased for everybody losing their minds over Our Flag Means Death (I shall be watching it on the weekend) but if it’s alright, I’ll just be over here in the interim losing my mind that Tumblr’s new boyfriends are the Say No To Racism guy and the 2Degrees Ad Guy. 2022 is really Something Else 

3,149 notes - Posted March 25, 2022

#2

The thing that has been vexing me lately about Fantasy Historical Sexism (vs the real kind) is how it flattens out actual historical politics - particularly in the high medieval period, sexism against female rulers was a tool for people who were already their political opponents for political reasons, rather than a common primary motivator for contesting inheritance. Fairly large numbers of women in medieval Western Europe inherited estates ‘suo jure’, in their own right - not even getting into things like the political power of abbesses (who could often be those same women in retirement, or their sisters or daughters or mothers). 

Historical fantasy tends to be so obsessed with having One Special Woman Who Is Fighting Sexism that it actually erases from the popular conception of history the women who were already there, and the complexity of their lives, and it’s just...very...dull. 

4,379 notes - Posted September 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I think one of the things that makes OFMD feel freshest is how it balances being a romantic comedy and being queer - specifically, a romantic comedy about queer men (& Jim). Queer men are not unknown in the romantic comedy genre! But what makes the show stand out is how exceptionally careful it is to ensure that the fact of their romances, and of their queerness, is never the source of the comedy. It’s never meant to be funny that someone is queer, or that someone is in love. Coming out, even in the most casual and incidental way, is never used as a punchline. 

And yet, it’s also not a utopia where stereotypes about queer people and homophobia (the things that ultimately fuel those kinds of jokes) don’t exist - they do! But every time somebody tries to make them funny, it falls completely flat. It steps outside the acceptable bounds of the genre and the characters react to it in that way. Homophobia isn’t a central obstacle, it’s a faux pas. It’s not allowed to be funny and it’s also not allowed to take up space in the narrative by being the thing the characters must overcome to get their happy ending. Which is a hell of a balancing act.

That scene with Izzy trying to mock Black Pete and Lucius is absolutely crucial to this tone. These characters know they’re in a comedy and they react to things like they’re in a comedy, but they don’t react to his mockery like it’s a joke OR like it has power to shame them. They react like Izzy is embarrassing himself by failing to read the room - like he’s a bully, but a pathetic one. You can be evil in comedies and still be funny, but Izzy is committing the cardinal sin of failing to be funny...and what that does is draw very clear boundaries around what the show is going to allow as a legitimate joke. Homophobic jokes can only be funny when the people making them have consensus from the rest of the group that they’re funny. Instead, in this show, it is clear instead that they are acts of violence and (attempted) control. Which defangs them, because the ultimate power in a romantic comedy always comes from acts of comedy. I find it extremely powerful for a queer romcom to look homophobia in the eye like this and say “nah” than either to ignore it completely, or to make it a central problem.

It’s very very smart writing and acting and it should be cited every time someone tries to whine about comedy and boundaries and not being allowed to be homophobic/transphobic any more. You can be extraordinarily funny about queer people and be received well. Queerness just can’t be the punchline. 

10,662 notes - Posted April 1, 2022

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