301 posts
Latest Posts by thestarsarenotyetnamed - Page 2
What does the arab in your carrd mean? Is it like afab and amab?
.. i’m palestinian
you know what fuck it, I love you historical spelling. I love you weird fossilised preservations of obsolete alphabets, grasping for something that exists now like mist, like liquid, its true pronunciation lost to time but not quite forgotten, not yet. a ghost remains, a friendly one, comfortable in this old house. I love you repurposed letters for phonemes that neither the old language nor the variety they were borrowed into has any need for anymore. I love you sensible vowel pairings that have grown - improbably - centuries later, into unwieldy diphthongs, quietly thriving in an ever-shifting environment like weeds nestled cosily beneath the shade of grander plants that have long since turned to mulch. I love the word 'diphthong' (the little thicket of consonants in the middle of it, sprouting up from nowhere to trouble tongue and penmanship alike). I love how Phoenician fingerprints remain in a Norman revision of an Anglo-Saxon reworking of a Roman borrowing of a Greek repurposing, all these shapes and signs moulded again and again like clay, like mud, spun like flax to carry all those lovely glides and nasals and obstruents which come and go and come and go over time as the sounds mutate and grow apart, and the people grow and age and die, leaving behind nothing except (sometimes) a page. a poem. a piece of themselves, their voice, rendered in imperfect beautiful scratchings whose contours match the ceaseless flow of time, heavy with all that history and somehow also light with the sheer urgency of being written. look at it, isn't it wonderful? this moment in time that holds within it yet other moments? other echoes calling down through the centuries? this is how we spoke, this is what we sounded like, once. this is how we thought our ancestors would have said it. I love the inconvenience. English is so hard to learn. the spelling is so illogical. so cumbersome. it's frustrating. it makes no sense. it's inconvenient. yes and yes and yes, and yet you too are inconvenient, you too are inchoate and too much and you fail to resolve into a neat and comprehensible order. but look at you. how lovely you are. I treasure you. why should the words you speak be any less lovely.
people will say "why cant the eldritch gods just be nice to humans :((" and then kill a bug for existing near them
Dragon room
suggestions for gender neutral version of mom/dad? something less formal than just ‘parent’
Shigeru Komatsuzaki's box art for Thunderbirds model kits.
Original
Rant incoming
I feel like the problem with a lot of Disney's live action remakes (and arguably Wish) is they're trying to appeal to a crowd that no longer exists, namely the people who used to claim that the Disney Princesses were sexist.
All the interviews tend to include, "Well she's not chasing a MAN anymore" which...almost no one sees the princesses like that, anymore. Virtually NO ONE still believes the princesses are man-chasing sexist caricatures of women.
Cinderella is now hailed as an abuse victim who stayed strong long enough to get help to get out of her situation. Anyone who says she should have saved herself is basically regarded as a victim blamer. And it's very clear in the film she wasn't looking to marry the prince, she just wanted a night off. She was the only one who wasn't in line to meet him. She didn't find out she met the prince until he went looking for her!
Snow White is now hailed for her negotiation skills, ability to calm down after extreme stress (she had a moment of panic and had to cry for a bit, but who wouldn't after finding out The Queen hired someone to kill you?), and ability to take charge of a house of adult men. And again, she was an abuse victim, this time trying to escape ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS. While she dreamed of her prince, it was secondary to her main goal of SURVIVAL. There are also entire video essays about how Snow White gave hope to people during The Great Depression.
Everyone acknowledges that Ariel wanted to be human BEFORE meeting Eric. We all know she was a nerd hyperfixating on humans, and also standing up to her prejudiced father.
We understand Sleeping Beauty wasn't the main character, the Three Good Fairies were, AND PHILLIP WOULD NEVER HAVE BEATEN MALEFICENT WITHOUT THEM! He literally depended on them! WOMEN SAVED THE DAY! But even then, is it really such a sin for a girl to fantasize about romance and fall for someone with corny pickup lines?
We all understand Jasmine just wanted someone to treat her LIKE A PERSON. She rejected every Prince before Aladdin because they treated her like a prize. So why did they need her to want to be Sultan? How did that make her more feminist when she already wanted to be treated like an equal and have a say in her future? Is it only empowering if you want a career in politics?
We admire that Belle, despite living in a judgemental village, was kind to everyone (even though she found the village life dull), and her story teaches girls that the guy everyone else loves isn't always a good guy. What's sexist about teaching girls about red flags? And she didn't start being nice to The Beast until he started treating her with respect and kindness.
Do I really NEED to defend Mulan or Tiana? I think they speak for themselves.
Rapunzel was yet another abuse victim who just needed a little help to get out of her bad situation. In this case, she also needed to learn that she was an abuse victim, and that what Mother Gothel did WASN'T normal, much like many victims of gaslighting.
And don't get me started on the non-princess animals.
Perdita had a healthy relationship with Pongo to the point she was open to express her pregnancy fears to him, and was ready to TEAR APART Cruella's goons for daring to touch her puppies as well as adopting the other puppies. Like, she was so ferocious the goons mistook her for a hyena! She's basically that "I AM THAT GIRL'S MOTHER!" scene from SpyXFamily if Yor were a dog. She and her husband were a TEAM.....but they made a Cruella live action to turn her into a girlboss?! The literal animal abuser!? THAT'S the woman you wanted to put on a pedestal when Perdita was RIGHT THERE!?
Duchess kept her kittens calm after they had been catnapped and was classy as heck. Nice to everyone regardless of social class during a time period where that was uncommon.
Lady stood up to Tramp when she believed he had abandoned her and didn't really care about her. She found out he was a heartbreaker and was like, "Nuh uh. No. You are not doing that to me! You put me through enough."
Miss Bianca from The Rescuers was IN CHARGE the whole movie, and was willing to risk life and limb to save an innocent child. THAT TINY MOUSE TOOK ON ALLIGATORS! And she picked Bernard to accompany her because he was the only one who wasn't ogling her. And then in the sequel SHE DID IT ALL AGAIN! I wish I were as brave as her.
Like, the public haven't accused these ladies of being sexist caricatures since 2014 (Actresses and actors don't count, they're out of touch like the rest of Hollywood) yet Disney is operating under the assumption that the public still thinks that way, hence all the "sHe'S nOt AfTeR a MaN iN ThIs VeRsIOn" talk.
The live action remakes are trying to attract an audience that doesn't really exist much, anymore, and back when it did exist, was comprised mainly of people who didn't actually watch the films. The Disney princesses are no longer seen as sexist, and feminine qualities are no longer seen as weak or undesirable.
tusken luke skywalker is such a fucking god tier au to me. obviously he still has the same parents etc BUT a’sharad hett is with obi-wan and is like. uh. maybe we should NOT simply dump him with his relatives. you know the ones vader has literally spoken to in person before? yeah those. and obi-wan’s like well okay then what do you think we should do and a’sharad goes “tuskens.” so they take him to a tusken tribe near owen and beru and a’sharad’s like listen up guys how would you like a new kid and they’re like oh hell yeah new kid. and owen and beru are still around, luke still knows them and stuff but he’s like. tusken.
I grew up reading Calvin & Hobbes, and one of my favorite running jokes was the snowmen that Calvin would build.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdQuxw52/
I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
If you can’t reblog this, unfollow me now.
THE FISH CARDIGAN IS DONE!!!
I finished this monstrosity about a week ago and as per I forgot to update on here
After eight months, I REPEAT EIGHT MONTHS, of stitching, crying, tangled thread, and more crying, I finished Scott’s fish cardigan 💪🏻
The things I do for International Rescue…
hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:
- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to
- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals
- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)
- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?
- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling
- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?
- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?
hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:
- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to
- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals
- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)
- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?
- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling
- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?
- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?
Reblog to make him lose another 200 billion, like to make him lose 1 billion
I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD. If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?
you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph… in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckin’ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things A few of my favorite autochrome photos:
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These are so fun to make
a piece i excavated from my 2022? files... it was either redo it from scratch, or post it as is, so here we are... i profoundly love a wizard of earthsea and am due for a re-read
Got reminded again of my old coworker who was a massive misogynist but also trans inclusive. Told me he believed trans women are indeed women because "only women would be stupid enough to want to be women"
I wonder what he's doing now
the person who helped today when I fell out of my wheelchair actually did a really great job, so I want to share in case other people wonder what to do. [Note: this is not universal, this is merely a suggestion from one person, every wheelchair user's needs are different! I am a person who uses a manual chair usually pushed by someone else who is also disabled.]
Scenario: you see someone in a wheelchair fall out of their chair, and you have the ability to help.
1. Approach and ask "are you okay?"*
2. Next question if they say no, are vague, or open to continuing conversation** is, "is there anything I can do to help?" Or "what can I do?"
If they say no to help, then that's the end, just leave and go do whatever you were doing!
If they ask for help or say they are mildly injured, ask "what would you like me to do?" And wait for an answer before doing anything! If they seem dazed or confused, they might have hit their head or had another medical event*, or they might just be like that due to regular disability. Be patient.
Do not touch the person unless they say to, or they are like, unconcious in the middle of the road, ya know?? Wheelchair users usually have conditions that mean being handled improperly can severely injure us, you could cause much more damage than the fall.
Some things they might need you to do:
Bring their wheelchair closer (mine went about 5 feet away after it dumped me)
engage the brakes of the wheelchair
hold wheelchair steady if it's an unsteady surface (mud, hill, ramp, wet, etc)
offer an arm for them to hold onto to get up (them grabbing you, not you grabbing them) or move another solid item closer for them to use (i.e. a chair) [only do this if you physically have the ability to!]
If the terrain is rough (i.e. a parking lot), they *might* ask you to push their chair to a more stable area once they are back in their chair
nothing
Something else
Do what they ask, NOT what you think would be helpful. If for some reason you have to do something (i.e. you can't stop oncoming traffic and need to get them out) ASAP, tell them what you plan to do
Keep in mind they might also be D/deaf, have a communication disability, be stunned after the fall, have a head injury, not trust other people, etc. Be patient and treat them as a person with autonomy and agency! They might need to just sit on the ground for a few minutes to recover before trying to get back in their chair. They might want everyone to leave them alone. They might ask you to call someone specific. Their chair might have broken and that can be extremely distressing. All of this is like if your legs spontaneously stop working when you're out and about!
A lot of wheelchair users (NOT ALL) have ways to get into their chair on their own once the chair is close enough and brakes engaged (but it's hard from the ground!). Here's what brakes look like on a lot of manual wheelchairs, in case they ask you to lock the brakes. They're levers on each side and pushing the lever pushes a bar against the wheel to hold it still.
ID: A manual wheelchair with the brake levels circled in red and labeled "user brake levers"
*There is also the possibility of course that a person fell out of their chair due to a seizure or other medical event, so that is why it is important to ask if they are okay. If you saw them hit their head, tell them so. If they had a medical event, follow protocol for that, I'm not gonna get into it here (thought I could).
**sometimes a person will be clear after the first question i.e. "I'm all good thanks" clearly means they do not need you to ask another question, you can just leave them alone. Keep walking and don't stare. A lot of the time people will be a bit banged up but be totally fine and able to manage on their own.
TLDR: Ask the wheelchair user if they're okay, then what they need, and then do exactly that, including leaving them alone. Thanks!
Firefighter demonstrates how to put out a kitchen fire
Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:
A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin
A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans
A clock that isn’t 24-hours
More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know
Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain
Multiple moons/no moon
Planetary rings
A northern lights effect, but near the equator
Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks
Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals
Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands
The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage
No concept of virginity or bastardry
More than 2 genders/no concept of gender
Monotheism, but not creationism
Gods that don’t look like people
Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats
Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot
Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom
“Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls
A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language
A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)
I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.