the-nettle-knight

[the-nettle-knight]

hate when people think the only archetype possible for a male sidekick to a female protagonist is a soft boi and/or himbo. like the implication there is that the only reason a man would ever defer to a woman’s authority is if he was a bumbling idiot. love male supporting characters who are smart and strong and confident and can step up when necessary but still kind and humble enough to let someone else take the lead most of the time

[the-nettle-knight]

The sigil was drawn in salt and ash, the candles lit at the pentagram points, the incantation declaimed.

There was a shimmer - a demon appeared.

"Curious. What ritual is this?"

"I got it from ChatGPT. I included all protections in my prompt!"

"I see," the demon said and stepped out of the sigil.

[the-nettle-knight]

I put a fair amount of screenshots under water so let me stress that this is the first time in a while that reading the first few lines on a Tumblr post has genuinely felt akin to being slapped across the face and taken my breath away in the process.

[the-nettle-knight]

Reblog if your art project has not, does not, and never will make use of generative ai at any point in your creative process.

[the-nettle-knight]

Whenever i get sad I just think about sour cream baby and get smiled again

[the-nettle-knight]

Very proud of my dog rn; she was a stray, and a Great Pyr, and is reactive, and it's been working on the reactivity for the three years since she turned up with very slow results.

BUT.

There are four guys working on re-roofing the house, and where three years ago this would have sent her into a meltdown, RN she is just laying on my feet quietly. She's still anxious, and she's barked a few times, but she's able to settle down when she sees me being calm about it.

[the-nettle-knight]

Sometimes you'll see a certain strain of Liberal Environmentalist talk as though environmental destruction in Imperial Periphery ("Third World") nations is the result of some personal failing of the people living there; that they're only cutting down trees and eroding the soil because they're too stupid and/or greedy to do otherwise. When in reality your average "third world" peasant knows very well how much they rely on their surrounding ecosystems to live and develops a pretty good idea of the deleterious impacts their action have. Their actions are a result of pure desperation; the grinding poverty forced onto them by Imperialism means living like this is the only chance they have at feeding themselves and their families for another day. The charcoal sellers around Lichinga (Niassa Province, Mozambique) in the 2000s provide a good example of this dynamic in practice:

The charcoal vendors also complain. They cycle with 3 or 4 huge bags of charcoal, easily exceeding their own weight, from as far as 80 kms away, pushing their bikes up the many hills. It is hard work to cut the trees, put them in heaps, cover them in grass and mud, burn them in a very controlled way, then load the bags and get them to Lichinga to sell them for $2 a bag of 25 kg - $6-8 per trip if they are lucky. If there was another way to earn this money locally, they wouldn't do this, they said. And they knew that the forest was fast being destroyed, moving further and further away, but what to do? As they say: 'Poverty sucks your bones dry'.

Joseph Hanlon & Teresa Smart (2008) Do bicycles equal development in Mozambique. Boydell & Brewer

[the-nettle-knight]

Boyfriend: wait but I thought you could change from alpha to omega? Like you get hit with a pheromone and bam become that and you fuck, but the rest of the time you’re androgynous

Me: … I think you have confused omegaverse with the seminal piece of science fiction literature The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin

[the-nettle-knight]

I saw a sign at a nearby village advertising a "veillée", a storytelling evening, which sounded intriguing, so I went out of curiosity—it turned out to be an old lady who had arranged a circle of chairs in her garden and prepared drinks, and who wanted to tell folk tales and stories from her youth. Apparently she was telling someone at the market the other day that she missed the ritual of the "veillée" from pre-television days, when people would gather in the evening and tell stories, and the people she was talking to were like, well let's do a veillée! And then she put up the sign.

About 15 people came, and she sat down and started telling us stories—I loved the way she made everything sound like it had happened just yesterday and she was there, even tales she'd got from her grandmother, and the way she continually assumed we knew all the people she mentioned, and everyone spontaneously played along; she'd be like "And Martin, the bonesetter—you know Martin," (everyone nods—of course, Martin) "We never liked him much" and everyone nodded harder, our collective distaste for Martin now a shared cultural heritage of our tiny microcosm. She started with telling us the story of the communal bread oven in the village. The original oven was destroyed during the Revolution; people used to pay to use the local aristocrat's oven, but of course around 1789 both the aristocrat and his oven were disposed of in a glorious blaze of liberty, equality, and complete lack of foresight.

Then the villagers felt really daft for having destroyed a perfectly serviceable oven that they could have now started using for free. "But you know what things were like during the revolution." (Everyone nodded sagely—who among us hasn't demolished our one and only source of bread-baking equipment in a fit of revolutionary zeal?)

The village didn't have a bread oven for decades, people travelled to another village to make bread; and then in the 19th century the village council finally voted to build a new oven. It was a communal endeavour, everyone pitched in with some stones or tools or labour, and the oven was built—but it collapsed immediately after the construction was finished. Consternation. Not to be deterred, people re-built the oven, with even more effort and care—and the second one also collapsed.

People realised that something was amiss, and the village council convened. After a lot of serious discussion, during which no one so much as mentioned the possibility of a structural flaw, people reached the only logical conclusion: the drac had sabotaged their oven. Twice. (The drac, in these parts, is the son of the devil.) The logic here, I suppose, was that no one but the devil's own child would dare to stand between French people and their bread.

The next step was even more obvious: they passed around a hat to raise money, assuming the devil’s son was after a cash donation. But (and I'm skipping a few twists and turns of the story here) the son of the devil did not want money, he wanted half of every batch of bread, for as long as the village oven stood. Consternation.

People simply could not afford to give away half of their bread, and were about to abandon the idea of having their own oven altogether—but then Saint Peter came to the rescue. (In case you didn't know, Saint Peter happens to regularly visit this one tiny village in the French countryside to check that its inhabitants are doing okay and are not encountering oven issues.) Saint Peter reminded them of one precious piece of information they had overlooked: holy water burns the devil.

People re-built the oven, for the third time. The son of the devil returned, to destroy it and/or claim his half of the first batch—but on that day, the villagers had organised a grand communal spring cleaning, dousing every street and alley in the village with copious amounts of holy water. The poor drac simply could not access the oven; every possible path scorched his feet for reasons he couldn't quite explain. So he was standing there, smouldering gently and wondering what was going on, when some passing tramp seemed to take pity on him, pointed at his satchel and told him to turn himself into a rat and jump in there, and the tramp would carry him where he wished to go. The devil's son, probably a bit frazzled at this point, agreed without much thought, became a rat and jumped in the satchel, and of course that's the point when everyone in the village sprang from the shadows, wielding sticks, shovels, pans, and started beating the devil's son senseless. (Old lady, calmly: "You could hear his bones crack.") So the son of Satan slithered back to Hell and never returned to destroy the village oven again—and the spring cleaning tradition endured; the streets were washed with holy water once a year after that, both to commemorate this glorious day of civic resistance when the village absolutely bodied the devil's offspring and to maintain basic oven safety standards. (Old lady: "But we don't bother anymore… That's too bad.")

She told us five stories, most of them artfully blending actual local events or anecdotes from her youth with folk tale elements, it was so delightful. She thanked us for coming and said she'd love to do this again sometime. I went home reflecting that listening to an old lady happily tell stories of dubious historical veracity involving the Revolution, property damage, demonic mischief and baffling municipal decision-making is literally my ideal Saturday night activity.

[the-nettle-knight]

[the-nettle-knight]

It is fascinating to me that Gideon Nav and Rand al'Thor have exactly opposite reactions to exactly the same core character conflict.

It is hilarious to me that the motif that represents this conflict for both of them is 'being a ginger'.

[the-nettle-knight]

I can't believe no one ever told me that the Locked Tomb is about Tamsyn Muir working through her grief from Pluto being de-canonized as a planet.

[the-nettle-knight]

Rand’ relationship with the Maidens means the absolute world to me

when somara offers him a coat cuz he might get cold even though its like 100 degrees outside (classic mom energy)

the way they arent scared of him and constantly follow him around to defend him, the way they still joke around with him and about him even after mat and egwene and the others start putting awkward distance between themselves and rand

the fact that they all love him because hes their brother or nephew or cousin by an adopted relationship of sisterhood, and follow him because of who he is outside of the dragon reborn

How rand wants them all safe, because he cares about them too, but he cant keep them from fighting and dying because sacrificing who they are for safety would destroy them

[the-nettle-knight]

finished wot s3 today and rewatching the witcher and thinking thoughts about my favorite hot powerful magic women

[the-nettle-knight]

Absolutely buckwild thread of ChatGPT feeding & amplifying delusions, causing the user to break with reality. People are leaning on ChatGPT for therapy, for companionship, for advice... and it's fucking them up.

Seems to be spreading too.

[the-nettle-knight]

Today's Seal Is: Yummy Backpack I Eat It Maybe