I'm a geeky, nonbinary genderqueer Wiccan Witch. You probably know me from my Witchcraft or Actual Play podcasts. Or that I'm the person Ryan Kopf tried to sue twice. Or from that webcomic I used to make. Or from that anime con I cofounded. Or that I'm just a weirdo named "Trae." They/Them. My Podcasts / My Personal Site / Buy My Books! / My Patreon!
Yeah, I'm actually far less likely to reblog anything if I get a guilt trip about it in the post regardless of context.
this is assuming its on art you normally wouldn't jump to reblog. i myself only rb stuff i really really like so .
The 'rude/demanding' tone would be stuff along the lines of "if you like but don't reblog I'll [threat]" which i see surprisingly often, both serious and more silly
The BS-Free Witchcraft Podcast: 70. Itâs Not About Us
Sometimes in this community folks have a habit of making things about them that⌠arenât. So thatâs what weâre addressing this time around. Because there are times where we need to step back and get some perspective.
Links:
Bennett Braun, Psychiatrist Who Fueled âSatanic Panic,â Dies at 83 (NYT)
Pastor Greg Locke Threatens to Dox âWitchesâ (Independent.co.uk)
Purchase âThe Witch and the Roseâ in eBook or Paperback (Amazon)
Pre-Order âBloody Damn Riteâ in eBook (Amazon)
(And, of course, donât forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)
Music: âSo I Said It,â âThe Man With One Eye,â âUntitled Nonsenseâ (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)
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Listen to the Episode | Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | YouTube
So what Iâve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff theyâre saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, âOh my god, Iâm so sorry, I never meant to say that.â
Like, âqueer is a slurâ: I get the impression that people saying this are like⌠oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as âf*gsâ. Like, âOh wow, thatâs a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?â
So theyâre really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.Â
Thatâs because thereâs a history of âpolitical lesbiansâ, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the âcorrectâ sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that donât contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.Â
When âqueer theoryâ arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like âThe Queer Disappearance of Lesbiansâ, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis âgold star lesbianâ (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened, âqueerâ was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didnât know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as âqueerâ were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and âqueerâ was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didnât get chased out of. If someone didnât disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didnât want to be called queer themselves, they could just say âI donât like being called queerâ and that was that. Being âqueerâ was to being LGBT as being a âfeministâ was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isnât evident when these interactions happen. We donât sit down and say, âOkay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, andâŚâ Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, âDO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,â because we cannot find a way to say, âThis word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldnât be alive in the same way if I lost it.â And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But Iâve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, âOh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didnât realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.â
The BS-Free Witchcraft Podcast: 70. It's Not About Us
Sometimes in this community folks have a habit of making things about them that⌠arenât. So thatâs what weâre addressing this time around. Because there are times where we need to step back and get some perspective.
Links:
Bennett Braun, Psychiatrist Who Fueled âSatanic Panic,â Dies at 83 (NYT)
Pastor Greg Locke Threatens to Dox âWitchesâ (Independent.co.uk)
Purchase âThe Witch and the Roseâ in eBook or Paperback (Amazon)
Pre-Order âBloody Damn Riteâ in eBook (Amazon)
(And, of course, donât forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)
Music: âSo I Said It,â âThe Man With One Eye,â âUntitled Nonsenseâ (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)
youtube
Listen to the Episode | Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | YouTube
Liechtenstein, regardless of size, is not a city under any definition. Liechtenstein has cities within it. The capital is Vaduz, though Schaan to the north has a larger population.
And no, Asia wouldn't be "close enough." It would be like saying "Chicago is in Wisconsin" is "close enough." No one is taught to refer to all of Eurasia as "Asia," and you are doing some really weird mental gymnastics to justify it.
The poll maker was wrong, and you're being weird about it.
Then you would say Eurasia, not Asia as that would refer to the Asian portion of the Eurasian continent and Liechtenstein is next to fucking Switzerland in the Europe part.
What makes things a potion? Like is chamomile milk tea a potion or just tea? What makes an elixir different to a potion? Or any other liquid based magic item word? Or are we going with these are just made up do whatever? Would love it if there's an actual answer, it's way more interesting that way
Trae's super simple definition of a "potion": Any mixture of at least two ingredients which results in a liquid used for a magical purpose.
That's... that's it. Elixir is mostly just a synonym.
Y'know, I don't know about other schools (and this was like twenty years ago) -- but at the university I went to, Business majors were almost universally despised across the rest of the school.
And almost all of them were completely unaware of this.
the universal college experience, no matter your major, is learning how remarkably fucked everything is. except business majors theyre having a great time learning to do basic arithmetic and and staring at that one supply and demand graph where the line goes up
You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.
By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.
I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?
Book update time! Back in January I published my first (non-graphic) novel, The Witch and the Rose (which you can buy here). I made it pretty clear that it was the first book in a series, and that more books would be coming.
And yeah, it's time to reveal that next book.
I'm excited to announce Bloody Damn Rite, the sequel to The Witch and the Rose and second book in the Mia Graves series, will come out June 11th on Kindle and paperback. Additionally, you can pre-order the Kindle eBook version of the book right now and it will be available on your devices immediately on June 11th.
So yeah! If you want some queer contemporary fantasy set in, of all places, an Indiana college town... I got two books for you.
Hey y'all, I know that itâs sometimes hard to keep witchcraft in your daily life, so I thought Iâd put together a helpful list of tips which can help you connect with your craft every day.
Infuse your tea with herbs with magic(k)al properties. Itâs a simple way to add magic(k) to your day.
Journal about your experiences. As you reflect you may find ways you connected with your magic(k) you didnât initially notice until you write it down it later.
Take a moment to look at the stars at night. Stargazing can help connect you to the universe.
Engage with your cat and/or dog if you have one. Animals have a natural connection to the spirit world, and engaging with your pets can improve your own connection.
Go back outside and look at those stars again. Donât you see, theyâre calling to you.
Try to make meditation part of your regular routine if you can. While it doesnât work for everyone, it can help you feel more connected and grounded. It can also help silence the ache that has clawed at you from before the dawn of time.
Add some herbs to your food! Herbal magic(k) is not only powerful but tasty too!
Go back outside again, and focus on the inky blackness of space. Climb up to the nearest roof, open your mouth, and let loose a primal scream in a voice that you donât recognize⌠that echoes deep in the parts of your soul you had long forgotten in a different life. A life that existed before the universe was born.
If you use tarot cards, bring them out! Practice makes perfect, and it can improve your connection with your cards.
Unfurl your blackened wings. Take flight and begin the dance that harkens the coming of the death bringer, Xi'HWYTH'iL. Open one of your many mouths and let the call that beckons the great beast escape your lips.
It is in fact very funny that a couple of dudes got so sick of waiting for Animusic 3 that they figured out how Animusic's technique of procedurally animating rigged instrument models based on MIDI input worked, wrote their own software, and started making their own original Animusic-style videos.