#respond don't react

[thepeacefulgarden]

[bakasara]

yay to the ol' ~let's run away together~ and a somber nod to the gritty realism of an open-secret relationship between hans and henry that will perennially leave jitka as the rejected wife-- but enough of that for a second. i've been to both clubs and i know all the songs!

the funniest and by far most compelling option for fanfic exploration TO ME is that jitka simply arrives with a personal handmaid who follows her everywhere. that's it.

she corrects everyone who calls her a servant to "my job is to tend to my Lady and ensure my Lady's safety", and always claims to be, idk, something like a poison expert and master embroider in the same breath -- but she never further elaborates, making anybody who'll deign to listen terrified to wonder just what exactly she is capable of doing.

naturally, Henry "Isterik Truther" of Skalitz is the first one to go 🤔 but it doesn't take long for all four of them to be squinting at each other two by two. they are all correct in their assumptions.

rosa loves visiting because she wouldn't miss the chance to be around other smart and willful women in a place where female independence of thought is valued. katherine is likely the wariest of the few in the know for a world of reasons but comes around as soon as she realizes this is two women who feel just as alienated as her in their own way.

and hans and jitka both agree to have a child for the sake of peace -- but then they realize they've gotten this far anyway, so... which is how the four of them band together with a selected few from henry and hans's ragtag team of people to fake a pregnancy in the longest-running and craziest con any of them's ever run. zizka does not dare compare it to the italian court heist because he fully believes this is crazier.

bozhena gets involved because someone trusted has to "deliver" the "baby", which is definitely not some child she relieved some other, slightly older child of (with her knowledge, so henry can get his beauty sleep at night).

at this point it's not even 'cause jitka and hans having to have a child would be that much of an imposition, it's just that this is far more in the realm of the kind of insane schemes all these people get into.

sam is really confused how he figures in all this at first but eventually he gets involved on priciple. "aww, 'cause of henry~!" yes sure but he also decides the whole thing is an incredibly funny way to stick it to a cruel world and he should do more of that in his free time.

i just know godwin has to run so much background interference he's coming out of it looking 10 years older. it is still most definitely the early 1400s and not everyone of the allies who end up knowing is necessary unfazed by the hansry of it all, even among those trusted enough for hans and henry to lower their guards, but godwin is officially the first one not to give a shit -- nor be especially surprised -- that hans and henry are now smooching.

i have 20/10 vision on this it's a whole thing

[lizasweetling]

Tea and British pastry- that tracks

and seriously, I'd be so impressed to see some one pour from a teapot to a cup only about 5% the size

[thepeacefulgarden]

Yeah! Or maybe...

They're driving

They literally just forgot

Their phone battery is low

Their social battery is low

They're in class

They're at church/temple/coven/whatever other place of worship

They're in a meeting

They're having a low-spoons day

They're expecting an important call and need to keep the line clear

Their baby is crying

They just had The Worst Day Ever (tm) at work or school and literally can't even right now

Their phone fell in the toilet, and now they have to put it in rice and wait for the magical elves to come and fix it

They're having a conversation with someone else about something really important (a family emergency, an emergency at work, a friend going through a breakup, something like that)

They're at the movies, a concert, a lecture, or something like that

They're at the library

They're on a prepaid phone and haven't been able to buy more minutes

They're sick

They've got something coming up in the next 24 hours that's going to cost a lot of spoons (even if that same task wouldn't cost you as many), and they need to conserve as many as possible so as not to go into "spoonie overdraft" when they have to actually do that task

Their executive dysfunction is acting up today

Their phone is broken, or the battery is dead

They're traveling internationally, and don't want to rack up roaming charges

They're grounded and/or lost phone privileges

They're dealing with their own problems, or with someone else's crisis

They left their phone at the gym, the office, school, on the bus, at home, or wherever else

The point is, literally none of this has to do with you, or with them not caring about you, or with them secretly hating you, or with them doing something they shouldn't be doing.

Reasons someone may not have replied that aren’t the bad reasons your brain suggests to you (they’re mad, stopped caring, you aren’t important, etc).

They’re asleep/resting.

They have no service.

They want to take time to form their reply.

They don’t have the energy to reply right now.

They’re working / don’t have access to their phone.

They accidentally opened the notification and meant to reply and got distracted (this doesn’t mean they don’t care either! I do this a lot and I love my loved ones dearly. My brain is just chaotic sometimes.)

They’re in a really bad place.

They’re in a situation where it’s rude to use their phone.

They really just want a break from talking to people.

They are enjoying a movie, game, activity, etc.

Something came up they had to deal with asap.

A lot of the time, to challenge irrational thoughts we need alternative explanations to combat them. Here are some for a situation when a loved one hasn’t replied to you. I encourage you to plan for other situations that come up for you as well.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

like it isn't even anything to do with temptation it's just second glances at stuff of a sexual nature because I'm not fully thinking it through as I'm going about my daily life or scrolling or whatever and then I realize and have to wrestle with the fact that I didn't immediately click away from whatever it was that I found titillating

[ianmelchizadek]

Exactly.

Idealized game theoretic arguments about punishing attackers to not encourage future attacks are all well and good in the realm of theory, but when we’re talking about non-state or quasi-state actors the reality is considerably messier—the people punished by the War on Terror were by and large civilians who had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda; in fact the US probably succeeded mostly in creating more terrorists than killing them. Likewise Israel isn’t actually in a position to punish Hamas directly, because military power is a very blunt tool and can’t be aimed in such a way as to only hurt people directly involved in October 7, even if they were inclined to try to wield it that way.

Waging war is a really shitty solution to the problem of terrorism! And terrorists know this. Which is why you need to approach the problem with restraint, diplomacy, and care.

[ceramicbeetle]

actually it's kind of funny how people will say Alex's fatal flaw is that he 'doesn't ask for help' and that it's his determination to handle things on his own that leads to his deterioration and eventual death when his whole introduction to the present-day timeline was a very literal cry for help that simply went ignored

[thepeacefulgarden]

[fideidefenswhore]

There is a saying that when Anne Boleyn was not the queen, she had greater power than the queen's three years. What do you think?

I think this rather limits the sphere of influence of royal woman (or, as it was for the former period, royal-in-waiting, Anne was a noblewoman, not a royal one, until she became Queen); to, how to put this...the 'domestic'?

Ie, it's known that Henry had mistresses while Anne was Queen, but not queen-in-waiting; I feel like when this is argued that's mainly what the gist of the argument is, she was his ultimate priority and singular love, then they married and the 'chase ran out' and the disillusionment was quick and debasing. And so her influence reduced concurrently.

And...while I find that summary rather specious anyways on whole, for the sake of argument, even if the former part were true, political power is something else. Queen-in-waiting was Anne at "I beseech your grace with all my heart to remember the parson of Honey Lane for my sake shortly", Queen Anne was Anne at seven of her own evangelical clients appointed bishops. After the fall of Wolsey we get "above all, the Lady Anne" re: Henry's councilors from the French ambassador, after Anne becomes Queen we get the contemporary remarks that she has the most influence with the King, beyond any other person, her time in power is referred to as her "reign". Even contemporary remarks after her fall are testament to the influence she had as Queen, "the fall of Queen Anne was like the fall of Lucifer", a parallel to God's most favoured angel being cast down...nobody remarks that it was evident her power had diminished once she married Henry.

Tl;dr, even following the paradigm of loss of love = loss of influence, I don't think...we have that much evidence of the former; the narrative is popular...well, because it's popular, if that makes sense? There's not much of an attempt to understand Henry as his own person, as an individual, particularly when it comes to his relationships with his wives. He was very ostentatious about what he felt for Anne: he "preferred the love of the queen to half his realm", he would "beg alms door to door" before he would forsake her, it's easy to dismiss this all as Henry being glib, knowing the ending, however...I believe he felt and meant these sentiments in the moments he said them, despite that, I think even had the ending been different, these expressions were both to Anne's benefit and detriment, really-- she was regarded as someone whose favour it was important to gain and keep circa as early as 1528, at the latest, all the way through to the end... but because of the common bruit of them, she was also, sometimes solely, blamed for Henry's unpopular decisions.

[astralleywright]

oh, when Orym looked right at Imogen, days after his talk with Fearne abt what to do if she switches sides, and tells her, "I'm not worried about you." and Imogen didn't insight check him, or push into his mind; she just believed him. and I believed him as well, even though it could have easily been a lie, and then Liam confirmed that Orym really did trust her when he said that. he really did believe that Imogen would stand by the Hells, and she did. she looked her mother in the eye and she didn't waver. and it's not specifically because Orym trusted her, but his trust really does mean something to Imogen. she sought him out that night for a reason.

and now the solstice is still happening but things are so different, and Imogen is one of the most vocally opposed members of the Hells to Ludinus, and the Ruby Vanguard, and Predathos. they're bad. they need to be stopped. she'll kill her mother, kill herself, if that's what needs to be done. her questions and her doubts are gone- or at least, hidden away.

and if they are not, if she's suspicious in any way, Orym has personal orders from the wise and benevolent Tempest (and she is wise and benevolent, is the thing!!) to remove her from the situation however he sees fit. to "do the thing," in the parlance used in Orym's conversation with Fearne, a phrasing acknowledged as vague even at the time. Orym, who loves Imogen, and who shows her kindness and empathy, and who stared the fathoms of nuance and pain defining the actors in this conflict in the face and rejected it in favor of revenge just last week. Orym, who told Fearne she would have to "do the thing" because he couldn't - I always assumed it was because he knew he couldn't match up to Imogen on his own, but it could just as easily be that he couldn't bear to do to her what he thinks would need to be done. Imogen still doesn't know they had that talk. the leash has been held so loose that she didn't even know it was there.

[seiwas]

a good cry always does wonders

[katya-goncharov]

i really need to stop taking several weeks to respond to my friend's messages

[pippuns]

it's honestly hysterical how badly that guy is trying to break twitter. imagine literally destroying your own site on purpose

[papayafiles]

(big text post that kind of starts in the middle of a thought but it's my blog so it's fine) (re: twitter)

the thing with people viewing (twt) lando fans as "haters" or "hypocrites" is that in my view, a lot of lando fans are doing it in a mostly retaliatory way, a kind of "you all nitpick and hate on lando for no reason so now i'm gonna do it to your drivers, to be fair/for you to get a taste of your medicine/as revenge bc i want you to suffer the way i did." and furthermore a lot of people nitpicking/pulling out tiny moments from other drivers are doing it in a "if lando did this he would be CRUCIFIED" way and not a "look at this tiny moment that is for real so horrible and disgusting; now send hate" way, and then it gains traction and kind of morphs into something else/actual hate/general discourse that just appears to outsiders as "wow all these people are genuinely upset over this tiny moment and they're yelling at each other/the driver on twitter about it." even many qrts that appear to be straight-up hate, as someone who knows the accounts, are doing it in a "well you've lowered the bar previously so now i'm just stooping to your level. see? how does this feel, hmm?" kind of way. it's all very chip-in-shoulder.

and that's not something i've personally seen from many other fanbases—when they hate on lando (or whoever), they do it in a direct "look at this loser" or "how dare he say this horrible thing" etc way, and i much more rarely see the "my driver would NEVER be allowed to do this; therefore HE (other driver) deserves to be punished for it" sentiment. (and this is very likely because those other drivers have received less widespread online hate to cause this knee-jerk reaction in their fanbases; and, in particular, less hate due specifically to nitpicked out-of-context moments/twisted words/pure misinformation. which i'll say is the most frustrating brand of hate)

and obviously if this continues other fanbases will start doing the same back and it'll be this cycle of "how's a taste of your own medicine you hypocrites" over and over and furthermore this is largely an internet/twitter phenomenon which, echo chambers and reactive communities. but still. and there's no moral or solution to this; it's just something i've noticed.

[connormoving]

loveee when a character is crushed under the weight of someone elses expectations for them love when a character dedicates their entire life to something they never even wanted for themself love when the only reason a character keeps going is because theyre Supposed to and bc theyre supposed to make another person happy/proud. YES !!! CLAPPING !!! YES !!!!!!!!

[thepeacefulgarden]