I also thought that she was signing - she seemed to put her hands on her chest, and then in front of her and then opened them like a book. She seemed to repeat it in several of the scenes.

I think the 'hands opening like a book' is the BSL sign for 'book', but I don't know enough BSL to say for sure, or to comment on the rest.

would love your opinion of the newest episode of DW, if you get the chance.

HAHAHAHA YES I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS

Alright okay so

I only have one complaint, which is that that wasn't a faerie ring. You could still have the shamble, no problem, but it should have been over the top of an actual faerie ring, which should be a mushroom (or, at a push, stone) circle. Not some cotton that would blow clean off the cliff edge in three minutes.

HOWEVER

This is the first time I've seen Doctor Who do a time travel story using, not Doctor Who time travel lore and rules, but Welsh faerie rules. (First time I've seen anything do it, in fact.) In Welsh myth, people who enter faerie rings or get entranced by the music become suspended in time, out of sync with the real world. They think they danced for a night, but when they return it's been 100 years, and they crumble to dust as soon as they eat/drink/step on land/etc.

In this case, this is what I think happened to Ruby. She spent that time in Annwfn, seeing what would happen if the binding on the ring was broken. When she 'dies', she returns to the spot and lasts long enough to give her younger self the warning, then crumbles to dust.

But, a time travelling Ruby is not the woman who follows her throughout the episode. That, in fact, is a gwyll.

The gwyllion were hag faeries, usually of mountain tops (though Pembrokeshire's liminal cliffs are 100% from Welsh mythology - it was said that if you found a faerie ring on one but only put one foot in, you could see the faerie islands in the sea. And that faeries used to visit the human markets in Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. So while gwyllion are unusual there, it's not an impossible relocation.) They were malicious and sometimes vicious faeries who delighted in making people lose their way, could strike an uncontrollable and ungodly terror into travellers, and who feature in more that one myth as an old woman that someone tried to approach, but they always appeared at the same distance away, impossible to catch up.

CAN YOU SEE THE PARALLELS

And the best part!! Is that this is why she defeats UNIT!!!

Kate tells Ruby that her agents have necklaces of silver and salt to keep out the supernatural, but that's just generic fairytale shit. That doesn't work on gwyllion. Salt drawn in a line would provide a barrier, but the UNIT soldiers aren't trying to trap or block the gwyll; they're trying to capture her. What works, very specifically, is a knife. Iron or steel for preference of course, but it needs to be a knife.

But UNIT has no Welsh employees and the soldiers have guns, not knives. And so they all become entranced.

(This is also what I think the gwyll 'says' to everyone to turn them against Ruby. She doesn't say anything - she sings.)

This is also the first time I've ever encountered any mainstream media doing Welsh faeries and understanding the tone to strike, which is 'unknowable, unstoppable and fucking terrifying'. I think I've only ever read it in Catharine Fisher books, and she's a Welsh author so... yeah, obviously. But I basically vibrated with delight and excitement for the entire episode.

Oh my god, hang on, Roger ap Gwilliam! Okay, I have two theories about him.

My weaker theory and the one I don't like is the kind of boring and obvious one, which is that he is himself not human. A lot of Welsh folklore features the devil, and I get that vibe from his role in the story. But, I'm not keen, because I can't see the link to the gwyll.

But my strongest theory, and the one I have chosen to believe, is that he's a human who made a deal with the Fae for power, and then reneged. There's a Metric Fuckton of stories about humans fucking up Fae gifts in some way, and the punishment is usually something ironic but always results in the loss of the gift. It could be a faerie harp that makes everyone dance, and the Fae tell the giftee not to abuse it, but they cruelly force everyone to dance so long and so hard that the faerie returns, takes back the harp, and then takes the human's ability to ever make music again, so example (by taking fingers or eyes or tongues as well, often.)

So I think Mad Jack strikes a bargain for power - but, then tries to abuse that power (nuclear war). But part of the bargain is that the Fae cannot approach him directly ever again. In the real world, they therefore tempt him into the faerie ring and bind his soul there, problem solved - until the Doctor accidentally lets him out, and gets his own soul stuck. Ruby, therefore, becomes the instrument through which they manage to take that power away once again - and then, her final Fae gift for her service is that they use the temporal anomaly of the faerie ring to send her back, at the end of her life, and give her a second chance. This time, with Mad Jack's soul left bound in Annwfn.

The fun part is, RTD is a writer who understands the power of not explaining everything and leaving some things up to the viewer's imagination, so none of this is ever going to be explained lol. But yeah, that is a gwyll. The moment she appeared, I said out loud "Oh holy fuck, gwyllion." That was a gwyll.

As a final observation, I loved seeing Siân Phillips, and I choose to believe they filmed those scenes in a pub because they could only get Siân if they agreed to just come to her local. The woman is a queen.

The Glorious 25th May, how do they rise up?

[Image ID]

Key dates for the 2024 UK general election

Deadline for registering to vote: 23:59 on Tuesday 18th June

Deadline for applying for a postal vote: 17:00 Wednesday 19th June

Deadline for applying for a proxy vote: 17:00 Wednesday 26th June

Deadline for applying for a Voter Authority Certificate: 17:00 Wednesday 26th June

Polling day: 07:00-22:00 Thursday 4th July

[End image ID]

I will be honest guys, the Red portrait of king Charles is gorgeous asdfghjkl

it's a bad portrait. Like. Objectively. It does the opposite of what's intended. It looks like the painter is insulting him. If it was in a contemporary gallery with no context you would see it immediately as the ambivalent criticism of Charles's reign, how he fades into the overwhelming red background as a tiny little figure, small and insignificant, insufficient for the clothes he's wearing. It reminds my of Goya's portraits, how they were so 'realistic' that they ended up making these great figures look pathetic to the viewer. So these are our rulers?

the sheer novelty. the surprise and shock, the kinda cunt it's serving for no reason. I. I love it. It's an incredible portrait by Jonathan Yeo. By the sheer fact that Charles, the man, is impossible to portray as greater than man because he's just such a nothingburger of a dude. So a portrait made to make him look huge and interesting made him be swallowed in red brushstrokes. The butterfly, that reminded me immediately of " we will all laugh at guilded butterflies", draws more attention than him. It looks like an omen. It looks like a warning in all this red. Something is not right here.

This is the best royal portrait ever 10/10

wonderful painting of Justyna Kopania

if you've seen that "voting as a fire extinguisher" poem around you should consider reading the full piece, "TO THROW A WRENCH IN THE BLOOD MACHINE: Five (Season-Appropriate) Metaphors for Voting." the author recently wrote an update talking about how he doesn't like the piece being taken out it's poetic context, where it isn't instructions on what to do but a "grappling with a complex idea, providing different possible doorways into critical thinking." also maybe check out his other work!

We have all been saying this was coming for years now. The UK is now introducing a new section 28.

This is a direct attack on the queer Community, stop accepting it.

me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU

Why the Devils Chord should have had Nina Simone not the Beatles

Nina was a fantastic pianist and Ruby is not only a pianist but one who was raised by a black woman. Don't tell me Nina wasn't played in that house. Unless Clara hates jazz? Which is lame.

JAZZ

You could have had Sinnerman building up in the background to a great dramatic finale against Maestro and it. Would. Have. Been. Beautiful.

Personally I just don't really care much about the Beatles, this is literally just personal bias because Nina's music was much more formative in my childhood than the Beatles ever were.

You can use it as a jumping off point to talk about how famous and influential bands like the Beatles were themselves influenced by great black artists like Chuck Berry. If you really wanna reference the Beatles you can have Nina's arrangement of Here Comes the Sun if you must.

It makes way more sense to have an episode about the importance music has to people be focussed on a black woman who grew up with gospel roots and like, investigating how people truly pour their entire selves into their music and how music is a powerful tool in maintaining a sense of self and identity particularly in an environment that oppresses them and wants them silenced, I'm sorry but it would have been more powerful imo to have that come from one of the greatest black women in music possibly across history but certainly in the 20th century. Again. Fucking Sinnerman. And like. Music as community and collaboration because everyone is inspired and influenced by each other so like a lot of Nina's music is her arrangements of previously existing songs so you can argue well why pick her over the Beatles then I just think it would have been better with someone like Nina. Doesn't necessarily have to be her I just think her arrangements are very beautiful and powerful and I have never felt that emotional response listening to the Beatles. I don't hear what other folks are hearing from them. I know a lot of people do get that from the Beatles but while tumblr is all a flutter at the moment about people choosing not to listen to black artists or dismissing entire genres that are predominantly performed by black musicians or who were created by black musicians (like anyone who says 'Well fuck jazz'. Really? Are you going to listen to Nina Simone and tell me jazz is bad? I don't believe you) it feels relevant rn and it's on my mind

Seriously they should have played Sinnerman.

I'm sleepy and dehydrated I've run out of points but someone cleverer is welcome to step in

I fucking love Ridcully he's like a steamroller in a room full of the worst people to have a zoom meeting that could've been an email with

Also:

The artist who made this is amazing.

Ellen Harding Baker (June 8, 1847–March 30, 1886), [...] taught science in rural Iowa, in an era when most institutions of higher education were still closed to women, all the whilst raising her five surviving children. She used her Solar System quilt to illustrate her astronomy lectures. To ensure the accuracy of her embroidered depiction, Baker traveled to the Chicago Observatory to view sunspots and a comet — most likely the Great Comet of 1882, which had become a national attraction — through the professional telescope there.

I’m glad the folks at NASA are having fun with XKCD too.

Today I am thinking about weaving.

I can knit and crochet, but those crafts didn't exist in Roman times. Any historically accurate Roman cloth must be woven. So when a little potholder loom jumped into my shopping basket for 50 cents, it felt like a sign I should learn.

One potholder that was 50% yarn and 50% weird gaps later, I looked up a tutorial, and realized why the damn thing was 50 cents. I needed a better, more adaptable loom. And, because I am a cheapskate and slightly loony, I decided to make one instead of buying it.

So, how does this thing work?

First, you string the warp threads up and down, around the pegs. Here, I made a zigzag shape. Then, you use a needle or shuttle to weave more yarn over and under the warp, horizontally, back and forth. This produces woven fabric.

Some looms weave from the top, some from the bottom. This Greek urn shows two weavers working from the top. The left weaver uses a rod to compact the woven fabric upward, keeping it even and sturdy. The right weaver is passing an oval-shaped shuttle through the warp threads to form another row.

Most Roman looms would have looked like this, with the finished cloth at the top. Unlike my looms, these are warp-weighted. That means you keep the warp yarns taut by hanging weights at the bottom, rather than through a bottom row of pegs.

Warp-weighted looms also have a big advantage over my little potholder loom: you can easily create multiple sheds.

A "shed" is a temporary gap between lifted strands and non-lifted strands. Instead of having to go over and under each strand individually, you raise the entire shed, then pull the shuttle or needle straight through. This saves lots of time! Then, to weave the next row, you close the shed, lift up a different set of threads to create a new shed, and send the shuttle/needle through the other direction.

On a warp-weighted loom, the sheds are opened by loops called heddles (H), which are attached to a heddle rod (G). When the rod is down, shed (1) is open (middle diagram). When you pull the rod up, shed (1) closes and shed (2) opens instead (right diagram). Most warp-weighted looms also have a pair of forks you can rest the heddle rod on, to free your hands.

Here, there are three heddle rods and sets of forks, the heddles are white, and the warp thread is red. This gives you four different sheds, and the potential to weave very complex patterns indeed. Not bad for a device invented over 6500 years ago!

I liked the multiple heddle-rod design so much, I tried incorporating it into my DIY loom, too. I've tested both yarn and paperclips as heddles:

I actually got both sheds and heddle-rods working, too. Which is pretty cool for a lap loom - every other lap loom I found only has one shed, so you have to go over-under the individual threads on alternate rows.* More time-consuming. However, the sheds here are narrow, and I'll need a smaller and smoother shuttle to pass through them smoothly. This wouldn't be an issue on a warp-weighted loom, where the warp hangs freely downward, and can move more flexibly with the heddles.

Anyway. I may get a "real" loom at some point, but I wanted to build one first, and I think it gave me more appreciation for just how resourceful ancient weavers were. They created technology, clothing, and artwork out of very basic materials, and civilization depended on these skills.

Now, I need to go finish the...whatever the hell it will be. Big thanks to Wikipedia and to the lovely Youtubers who make this craft easier to learn. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

(*Edit - found out a rotating heddle bar can make two sheds on a lap loom! Exciting!!)

I decided to create something that I wish I had when I first got diagnosed with autism - so here’s my comic for ASDComicTakeover! You can find out more about the project here!

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