thunderheadfred

[thunderheadfred]

hey uh new type of ao3 spam comment just dropped. (I know it's spam because the fic they left this comment on . doesn't have chapters. lmfao). Report this kinda comment as spam and don't take it personally it is literally recycled bullshit

[thunderheadfred]

if you ever find yourself thinking “wow I scraped the bottom of the barrel with my energy with that and came out okay!” that’s the devil talking. you did not come out okay. you borrowed energy from the future. you will repay it if you don’t rest and replenish the borrowed energy first.

[thunderheadfred]

At long, LONG last, my hand-embroidered Iron Bull wheel of fortune tarot card from Dragon Age Inquisition is FINISHED! It took 111 hours of work overall, by FAR the most elaborate piece in my embroidery series. 11.5x19.5 cm in size.

If you've been following along the very slow progress of this piece on IG, you won't be surprised that this one has been on the move with me now for about 7 months while I've been involved in theatre work. I'd add to it while backstage, during tech weeks, and in green rooms while relaxing with work friends. As such each section contains memories of where I was and what show I was doing while working on it.

I probably could have finished within a shorter span if I'd dedicated more of my free time to it (same amount of hours probably, in fewer months) but I engage with these pieces like I do with the Dragon Age franchise as a whole: to have something comforting to return to and enjoy when the time is right. I hope you've enjoyed the slow journey of this one as much as I have.

[thunderheadfred]

- f.k.q

[thunderheadfred]

Okay so just to sum up recent events on the US Right:

• Trump starts a contract with Peter Thiel's Palantir company to create a database of ALL INFORMATION on EVERY LIVING AMERICAN

• Its revealed Stephen Miller and Elon Musk have had a very massive fight, supposedly because Elon Musk is sleeping with Miller's wife

• Trump ousts Elon from the administration, after over five months of being besties. Leaves with Stephen Miller's wife, who he just hired at one of his companies (!?)

• Elon starts saying the Big Beautiful Bill sucks

• A GOP Representative reveals that most of them didnt actually get to read the Big Beautiful Bill, GOP leadership basically made them rubber stamp it and they are pissed to find out it makes them all look horrible. A lot of them are now discussing a shakeup in GOP leadership.

• Trump says Elon has "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (🤮)

• Elon escalates massively, stating that Trump is in the Epstein files and THATS why they havent released them yet

• This comes right as Alex Jones loses a massive chunk of his audience because he's endorsing Trump's Palantir contract, and his fans are basically all very concerned about their privacy. They want a new conspiracy to follow and they just got one

• Trump starts threatening Elon's government contracts

• Ian Miles Cheong calls for Trump to be impeached immediately, and for JD Vance to become President. Elon Musk quote retweets this with "Yes"

• JD Vance was mentored by Peter Thiel

• Steve Bannon takes to Fox calling for the immediate deportation of Musk, and making SpaceX a public company

[thunderheadfred]

weird cultural shift detected

Fam, be careful with your time online. I highly recommend sinking some time and energy into offline pursuits.

Try: knitting or crochet; gentle movement, stretching, walking if you can; playing a musical instrument, whether it's piano or penny whistle; and especially reading.

I do not mean performative BookTok reading that we do for likes because our neurotransmitters have been nerfed by modern life.

I mean actual reading that we do for ourselves alone.

If reading is hard, if attention or energy or memory are operating at a deficit, I get it. Nevertheless, please try. If you notice you're skipping across big chunks of text like a river stone, if you can't finish a paragraph, slow down, pronounce the words out loud. Stop sometimes and ask yourself what you just read. Explain the story or article or poem to your blorbo or your cat or a stuffed animal.

If your head feels scrambled up, no judgment. We may have incredibly intractable neurochemical reasons that this is hard. Just tell the blorbo, "That's hilarious, I don't remember any of what I just read. Let's read it again, together."

(Please don't ask A.I. to do this for you. Please. It's your right to read and think about it your own way. A.I. doesn't actually understand anything. Please don't assume it will guide you safely through this next weird phase of our human culture.)

If reading longform, offline, makes you feel bored or anxious, be gentle and patient with yourself. Start with stories you remember well, reliable sources of well-being. But please know you will need to put some backbone into it in the long run.

I think we are going to need to rebuild our ability to think, to process experience. This will be an unsupported activity. In fact, most of the really powerful cultural forces are making it very hard for us to notice, feel, perceive, or think clearly.

Not sure what, but something's happened quite recently that is making this situation much worse, some kind of tipping point.

Please read something every day.

Your friend, greenjudy

[thunderheadfred]

A legit way to fight the climate crisis from where you're sitting right now

As promised, in honor of Earth Day, I've written some suggestions for how you can write a letter to the editor for your local paper, and reach some people who otherwise might get a more...shall we say restricted view of climate news. Letters to the Editor remain a surprisingly important political vehicle. People see letters to the editor and they feel like they're hearing from their neighbors- real people with authentic, down-to-earth agendas. They're the second most read part of the paper, after the front page. Take that stage!

Step 1- Pick an article in your local paper to respond to. Today is Earth day, and lots of papers will have at least something about climate crisis or environmental protection on it's pages. Local papers are better, because, as you can imagine, papers like The New Yorker get a lot more submissions to compete against, and anyways they don't have the same sense of local opinion.

Don't fret if your local paper leans conservative! That means it has readers we REALLY need to reach! And they may be more open to reading about these issues in a paper than online, which particularly a lot of older, don't feel like "the real world".

Step 2- Figure out what you're going to say! Maybe there's a glaring error in the article you want to address. BUT, if you're not sure, you can look up your local organization that's fighting for these goals. For example, I could look up and find MN350, because I'm in Minnesota. Going to their social media and their webpage/newsletter archive gives me an inside look at what people who are really immersed in these subjects have to say about what's going on.

So, for example, I see that my local group applauds Minneapolis's efforts at going to all clean energy, and has a timeline, but that people on the inside are saying that without a dedicated funding stream, people implementing these changes will have to either hope federal funding stays stable or fight for funding in the city council every year. Ok, now when there's an article about Minneapolis's plans, I have something to say.

Step 3- Draft it up.

The goal here is to be short and to the point.

Opening line: Identify which article you're responding to, and maybe your feeling about it.

First paragraph: What is the specific issue? What is a relevant fact and why does it  warrant public concern?

Second paragraph: What would you say that we do in response, or what would you ask your neighbors to do?  Why?

Third paragraph: What is currently being done to address the issue and how could people who have been persuaded act?

This should be no more than 150 to 250 words TOTAL.

While you're wording it, some things to keep in mind- stats and facts are good, but don't use a lot of acronyms or jargon. Expect your readers to be coming at this with about an 8th grade education.

If you have a sense of what the people you're talking to find persuasive, lean into that. For example, for my letter to the editor, I emphasized that chaotic funding leads to lack of ability to plan ahead or bulk-buy. I know the people I'm talking to like things to be common-sense and detest governmental waste, so that's an easy one.

If you want extra help, I have a list of best practices for communicating about the climate crisis right here.

Step 4- Proofread, then submit it via whatever process your local paper has. The goal, if you can manage is, is to submit something within 48 hours of the original article's publication. That's the sweet spot for most papers.

BONUS ROUND!

You did that, and still have a little energy for the environment left? There's one more thing you can do to super-charge your effort!

Guess what, you can stack the deck in favor of your specific letter being published.

But it will involve using a phone.

That's right, if you REALLY wanna turbo boost this thing, you're gonna call the paper (or have your non-phone-adverse-friend or family member pretend to be you and call the paper).

Call as soon as possible after the editor would have received the material.

Use pleasant persistence to speak with the right person. Don’t stop at a receptionist or secretary. Create enough POLITE urgency about your letter that you get through to the specific reporter or editor who will decide whether or not to print your piece.

Provide the editor with specific local info and urgency. Focus your conversation on why this issue is relevant to their readers.

Get specific feedback and/or a specific commitment from the reporter. If they don’t want to print the letter, find out why and what adjustments you can make to get it printed.

If they agree to print it, find out when you can expect to see it in the paper. The you can tell other people. Even if memaw isn't a big climate activist, she might show your letter to everybody she knows if she knows you wrote it.

And that's the process! I know that's a lot of information to throw at you, but ultimately, it can be pretty quick to crank these things out. And, again, these have been proven to be powerful persuaders. We need as many people as we can to be in this fight, so go and get them!

And always remember, you're not just combating ignorance, you're combating hopelessness, helplessness, and burnout! You can inspire people to think about what's possible.

PS if any of you actually do this, please let me know. It'd make me so happy.

@onbearfeet @basil-gardens @punkypine @rederiswrites @veritatemquarens @radioraja

[thunderheadfred]

Alt health clowns: all doctors just diagnose whatever fake diseases they need to push evil toxic pills!!!

Actual doctors: wow sorry to hear that your bones dissolved and your eyes flew out and exploded and all your skin fell off, try drinking more water and sleeping better and if the pain gets worse in 6 months we'll do some tests to see if you deserve a aspirin

[thunderheadfred]

Steppies!!

[thunderheadfred]

I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.

Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.

[thunderheadfred]

Had a dream that explicitly told me to get pregnant again in November and I’m like

(Thousand yard stare)

I’m thinking about it

[thunderheadfred]

do mermaids sleep with the fishes

Survey says:

[thunderheadfred]

long-overdue BNHA manga finale reaction (spoilers under the cut)

From 300 onwards, I have been having a slow motion coronary

The final battle chapters have just had me screaming various characters names aloud

I can't even make a list of all the characters that had me screaming it would just be ALL of them

It's too much it's too much I can't take it

when Toga revealed the Twice blood I LEPT UP AND SHOUTED I was REMOVED FROM MY SKELETON I was ASTOUNDED I was AMAZED I was IN LOVE

ITS ALL SO GAY

Toga and Uraraka: GAY

The First and the Second: GAYY

Bakugo and Deku: GAYYYY

Even the ships I don't ship are gay

GAY GAY GAY everyone MAKE OUT

TODOROKI FAMILY DRAMA: ICESCEPADES

how did Hawks get hotter AFTER his wings got blown off???

Horikoshi was like, okay, look. I'm gonna take his wings. But just for all you sluts, I'll put in some bloody shirtless sword-holding Hawks with a hot new undercut, as a special lil' treat

swords????? swords

literally Hawks went into AFO's mind like a weed gummy singing "you should not have eaten me, shetbag" and put all AFOs stolen quirks in a harem like. damn.

ughha eI'm so stressed

(((2 months later: hi um I have ADHD and a 10 month old ummmmmmm I got extremely distracted and found this in my drafts anyway I'm a little high so let me try and wrap this up)))

I've gotten the general vibe that this finale was not popular in the fandom at all? I'm not really in the fandom (see: old, mom, ADHD) but

I thought it was. just fine? Like purely O.K.

This is basically the ending I figured the story would have, and several beats of the final fight were outright SPECTACUFUCKINGLAR

but it did feel rushed

AFO's evil baby backstory was.......... let's say odd

as if, overall, Horikoshi just got tired and was like "I'm skipping the two years of high school drama that was supposed to come before this"

Despite having like 200 chapters dedicated to this fight it felt rushed, as if it was supposed to be spread out over years of time with a lot more development in between.

At least the flash forward wasn't Harry Potter flash forward levels of bad. I thought it was fine.... but again sort of felt obligatory like... "I have to leave this open-ended return to status quo because I didn't actually explore this universe all the way yet"

which could have been avoided if he'd just... written two more years of intended high school drama and whatnot slowly ramping toward the finale

BUT

all that said, as a creative person living in this world, I understand if the man just... did not want to have a 1,000 volume manga

like he gazed down the gaping maw of the Overbearingly Huge Franchise Vortex, said ughhgg, and decided to move on with his career

I have no idea if that's the reason but I would respect it

So yeah. I guess it was mildly more blah than it could have been, and I wish hero society had been a bit more scrumbled up and flipped around on its head

But not so terrible or disappointing or failing to deliver on the premise that I hated it.

wise takes may pursuade me otherwise, idk

Also it's made me want to write (ANythinG) for the first time in an eternity, so for that it gets a special kind of personal thumbs up

[thunderheadfred]

my utopia

[thunderheadfred]

Hey

Hey Americans.

The federal government is about to get useless for at least a bit. This is a GREAT time to get involved in state level environmental orgs. That's where you're gonna be able to do the most for the next few years. Even a bit of casual volunteering can make a big difference.

I've done this off and on for years and when we go local we WIN. And friends winning feels good. This is how a lot of progressive agendas have won in this country. The whole US isn't out of this. People ARE still fighting climate change all around you.

You could be one of those people, in community with other people who are doing something.

doom and gloom "oooh everything is pointless oooh I'm so deep and edgy because I love trying to be the death of hope" people will just get blocked. I'm not talking to your crab-bucket ass.

[thunderheadfred]

STARTING TOMORROW

Scientists in weather and climate are live streaming for 100 hours to make their case to the American public.

They are live streaming, but engagement is necessary for it to work. SHARE THIS WITH PEOPLE, RECORD THE STREAM, POST CLIPS OF IT THAT ARE FUNNY, if you can tune in, PLEASE DO!

This is something that has to be heard by as many people as possible. Put it on in the background! See if you can get other people to watch it! Do whatever you can do support those who are trying to be supported! Anything and everything helps!

TUNE IN HERE

article I posted screenshots of here