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poetessinthepit · 2 months

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You express your thoughts so clearly and in such a way that’s so easy to follow/understand. It’s impressive. I’m curious, did you take debate classes or something similar, or is that something that just comes naturally for you?

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the compliment.

I'll answer your question by revealing a little about myself.

I've always loved to read and write. My childhood dream was to be a professional writer, and while that dream never came to fruition, it led to me to refining my writing and speaking skills during my formative years.

I never participated in debate club or took classes, but when I was in high school, I participated in a YMCA program called Youth in Government. For this program, you had to learn parliamentary procedure, research your state laws, and write a bill. Your hardwork would culminate in a trip to the state legislature where you'd spend the weekend with other students, acting as a mock legislature and debating bills. It was total nerd shit. I think many of the kids who participated had an interest in politics. I was already completely disillusioned with the political system at 16 and mainly just wanted to argue with people in a formal setting. I won "best first year legislator" my first year, and it's probably because I spoke on nearly every single bill. I would never turn down an opportunity to get on a microphone.

When I was in high school, I was generally known for always raising my hand and getting into debates, not only with classmates but with my teachers. It got me in trouble a few times, and I think my classmates found me annoying.

I did write for my school paper, but I don't think I ever wrote about controversial topics; I was more interested in covering the arts and signaling to everyone that I had "good taste." But mostly, I loved editing more than I liked writing articles. In English, I actually enjoyed classroom activities where we'd have to swap essays and make edits. Whenever these activities commenced, I was over the top with the amount of corrections and suggestions I would make to the essay of a fellow student. I would hand back their paper, and it would be covered with red marks. I remember sighing in a disappointment when my only note would be needing to add a coma. I was ridiculous. I cannot emphasize enough that I was a total fucking nerd. I was simultaneously down on myself and full of myself in the way that only a teenager can be.

When I was a senior in high school, I took a class called Contemporary Issues that focused on current events and involved a couple debates but nothing as formal as what I participated in with the Youth In Government program. I also remember my teacher in that class also made some crazy statements like one about extreme leftism being associated with terrorism. It definitely wasn't a very good class, and it didn't teach me much about debating.

In college, I majored in communications, but I never finished my degree. I still learned a lot from the classes I took, and I use the skills I developed in my career today, even though my career is in a totally different field.

I don't think that I'm the most gifted orator or writer, but I have long been obsessed with writing the perfect sentence, crafting the perfect argument, and being as precise as possible in the way that I word things, sometimes to a fault, and I think that obsession carries through even in junk I'm posting on social media.

Anyway, I know that was an unnecessarily long and detailed answer, but I hope the few followers who bother to read this enjoy learning a little bit more about me.

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tomsawyee · 11 months

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something in the last, like, year or so has completely killed any of my desire to ever interact with A Fandom ever again, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it--

I used to have a notion that, even if my personal ways of interacting with the media I enjoy on a deeper level never aligned with the “mainstream” of a given fandom, I could still carve out a place to enjoy myself. But the more time I’ve spent in these spaces, the more absolutely convinced I am that they are, despite what they would adamantly insist, generally repellent to critical thinking. And I always knew this, a great deal of us always knew this, but I’ve just. Lost the ability to politely ignore it while I do my own thing, because those people inevitably find the things I make, anyway. And I still have to fucking listen to them. Because they are the majority. And as audiences churn, the core base never learns anything.

As the internet centralizes, actively contributing to this hobby community gets you labeled a Content Creator, and with that comes the mob expectation that you create content. For free. On demand. This exacerbates the perceived social divide between Creators and Consumers. People who don’t actually contribute to the body of work get this idea that they are being forced into an Out Group, when in reality, the In Groups are generally just people who care about the thing more than you and end up making friends because of it. This is particularly obvious in big fandoms. Creators are at the same time perceived as Fandom Elite while also being your unpaid court jesters.

And fandom is racist! It’s so fucking racist, and it hides it in pseudo-progressive, frequently queer language while constantly looping the same shitty excuses for whitewashing and ooc stereotyping and bending over backwards to cut POC out of the picture as much as humanly possible, REGARDLESS of what the original text says. So, so often, I go back into the source material thinking “Am I the one who remembers this the wrong way??” only to find that, no, the fandom presence for a given series will always default to distilling the text down to only its white people, then only its lighter skinned people. Characters of color are props to fandom. There is zero interest in the internal lives and humanity of people of color. Fandom would rather make a white protagonist Ambiguously Tan than pay half a mind to an actual character of color. And if you point it out, you get dogpiled by white queers self-righteously crytyping in your notes. Fandom friends and friendly acquaintances of color I meet are always the first people to burn out and leave, because being here is so consistently hostile. Of course AO3 is 70%+ white. Why the fuck would you willingly put yourself through this?

Despite this, we fancy ourselves a ‘progressive’ subculture because we allegedly care about things like ‘representation,’ a concept that has lost all meaning in a dozen different, equally infuriating ways. The delusions of a Higher Purpose, of fandom as political statement or even activism, are all the more embarrassing under this lens. The pervasive idea that fandom exists to “““fix”““ the silly, dumb “““regressive”““ source material by sanding down every single corner until it is the same featureless sphere that can be effortlessly slibbered down like every other cookie cutter re-imagining that came before it. The idea that professional writers are generally outclassed by fandom writers. Pestering creatives on the bird app worked for Glee, so now every time something happens that we don’t like, it becomes a social media moral crusade that is honestly embarrassing to be even tangentially associated with. I’m not here to change the scope of entertainment, or to keyboard warrior for some fictional characters produced by a multi-billion dollar media company that will never see me as anything but a demographic with a wallet. I’m here because a work made me feel creative. It’s not that deep.

(the more expensive the art is to make, the less likely it is to ever target “risky” smaller demographics! this is why TV and film and AAA games suck so much! if you want more textual queerness, read books!) (or listen to them!) (look up some webcomics!) (enormous media companies will NEVER be beacons of creative progress!)

So yeah I’ve come to accept that me and this world are just. Fundamentally incompatible. I’m never going to like it here, despite really, really trying for half my lifetime. I need to stop trying to carve out spaces for myself, because the percentage of people who legitimately care about critical and creative analysis of art and fiction is exponentially smaller than this community would have you think.

#in conclusion #it's stupid.

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huevobuevo · 4 months

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The official strike is over, I’ll be returning to normal silly posts, but I’m still gonna dedicate a majority of my free time whenever possible to reblogging any & all informational posts regarding the Palestinian genocide

I have a small blog with little active followers, but any & all efforts made to keep Palestine trending in the algorithm helps keep the imagery of Palestinians afloat. It’s sad to say that getting in the top five of social media is some form of activism, but being able to work the feed like this is necessary to avoid silencing the voice of the oppressed. im also gonna try to boost information regardinf the Yemen famine crisis & the Congo Genocide as well, i hope everyone else will continue to do the same thing even past the official strike deadline.

ive heard theres another Strike happeninf on the week of February 18, keep your eyes peeled and your hearts always with the people of Palestine

fuck ""israel"", fuck the colonists trying to repeat history, fuck starbucks and mcdonalds and Amazon and every single other organization that has sided with the war criminals. Call for the immediate destruction of the settler colonists & continue to fight for the freedom of Palestine

#once I have my independent bank account set up I’ll be able to secretly donate 10% of my monthly allowance to e-sims &#care for Gaza. every little thing helps

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kayleezra · 2 years

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Nighttide Waltz // (Marcus Pike x GN!Reader)

Word Count: 705 Warnings: no beta lol

Summary: You wake Marcus in the middle of the night to slow dance.

A/N: This 100% came to me when I was down the social media rabbit hole and saw some cute couple (that made me feel real single) and thought ‘this gives Marcus Pike vibes’

Did I write this at work? Yes. Did I proofread it? No.

The blue-hued light of your phone lights up your face. Not only had your brain decided that you weren’t going to sleep in on your day off but that you weren’t even going to get the regular hours of sleep; you’d woken up at 2:47 am, unprompted, and sleep seemed to be avoiding you like the plague as you mind was fully alert. Which brought you to pull out your phone, hoping to read something and lull yourself back to sleep before long.

Your phone, being the attention vortex that it is, had you checking multiple apps and soon mindlessly scrolling through social media. Slumber was soon to take over anyways, right? Wrong, the mindless scrolling consumes time faster than you realize and you only stop when a short video shows up on your feed. The video is of a couple slow dancing in their living room, based on the light streaming from their window it’s evening. The video’s caption explains that this couple slow dances every Friday evening allowing them a moment of peace and to enjoy an activity many rarely get to do: slow dance.

People should absolutely slow dance more often! Hell, even just dance more often! The entire act screamed ‘Marcus’ all over it. Marcus would often sway the two of you whenever he got his arms around you which was more often than not. The excitement and heartwarming feeling in your chest made you act without thinking.

“Marcus? Marcus?” You whisper while gently nudging the man’s shoulder.

Marcus sleepily rubs his eyes still dazed from sleep, “what’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“I want to slow dance.”

“What?” Marcus’s brows furrowed in confusion, unsure if he heard you correctly.

“I want to slow dance with you.”

A smile breaks out on his face, his eyes softly looking back at you, “what time is it?”

You glance at your phone, suddenly feeling guilty realizing the time and your odd request.

“It’s 3:22. I’m sorry! I don’t know what came over me, go back to sleep we’ll have plenty of time to dance later.”

“What song?”

“Hmmm?”

“Well, we’ll need a song to dance to. What song did you want to dance to?”

“I- I don’t know, I just got excited.”

You feel silly but Marcus? Marcus is falling more in love with you which he didn’t think was possible. Marcus is looking at you, like he’s watching the most beautiful display of the Northern Lights, with sheer awe and admiration. Marcus is quick to pull out his phone and find some slow songs to dance to, the soft music grabs your attention to see Marcus get out of bed and turn on his bedside lamp, casting a warm glow in your bedroom.

Marcus offers you his hand, “would you do me the honours of dancing with me?”

You can’t help the giant smile that grows on your face, absolutely thrilled that he’d dance with you even though you woke him at a ridiculous hour on his day off. You almost literally jump out of bed and grab his hand. Marcus pulls you in, one hand intertwined with yours the other resting on your hip. You loop your free arm around his torso and rest your face on his chest. The two of you sway to the music, enjoying not only the silence of your home but of the city. The only things that are awake now are the lamp, music and you two, the rest of the city sleeps.

Peace has never quite enveloped you as it does now with the warmth casting by the lamp and Marcus’s chest; the steady rhythm of the music, your shared movements and heartbeats; and the silence of the rest of the world.

You look up to Marcus, unable to believe that this man is yours. How did you get so lucky? Marcus’s eyes are already on you, thinking the same thing as you: ‘how did he get so lucky?’ No words feel adequate enough to express your love and gratitude so all you say is a quiet ‘I love you.’ Marcus kisses your head, letting his lips linger before turning to rest his face atop your head and saying, ‘I love you way more, darling.’

Taglist:@spideysimpossiblegirl @littlemisspascal @writer-darling @avengetheunnatural

#marcus pike x reader #marcus pike x you #marcus pike fanfiction #marcus pike #the mentalist #pedro pascal characters

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the-rewatch-rewind · 1 year

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Just one look and I can hear a bell ring. One more look and I forget everything.

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most rewatched movies. Today I will be talking about number 26 on my list: Universal Pictures, Littlestar Productions, Playtone, and Relativity Media’s 2008 musical Mamma Mia!, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, written by Catherine Johnson adapted from the stage musical book also by Catherine Johnson, and starring Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, and Colin Firth.

Shortly before getting married, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who was raised by single mom Donna (Meryl Streep), discovers that she has three possible fathers: Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), and Harry (Colin Firth). She decides to invite them all to her wedding, assuming that she’ll know her father on sight and her life will feel complete. Dysfunction, hilarity, and ABBA songs ensue.

Okay so I’m going to apply what my sister Rosemary said about Newsies to Mamma Mia!: this movie is objectively not good. The plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, most of the songs don’t really help tell the story in a particularly meaningful way, and the singing is not great. This is the kind of movie musical I was criticizing in the Chicago episode for casting stars who aren’t really singers and just letting them sing badly. Not that everyone in Mamma Mia! is a terrible singer; they’re just…not all great. I can’t say that every singer in Chicago is better than every singer in Mamma Mia! because then Christine Baranski would have to be better than herself. Anyway, while I recognize that this is not a good movie, it does make me feel good. Watching it gives me a rush of dopamine, and I think I was practically addicted to it for a while. Part of that is because it came out at exactly the right time for me.

I wouldn’t say that I was a particularly big ABBA fan prior to seeing this movie, but I did enjoy some of their songs. The main thing I remember about my senior prom – which, incidentally, was in May of 2008 – is that for most of the evening I didn’t recognize any of the music. I’m sure they were popular songs of the day, since a lot of my peers were singing along, but as discussed in previous episodes, I spent most of high school listening to Julie Andrews, so I was very out of touch. But toward the end of the evening, when most kids had left for afterparties or whatever, they started playing older songs for the chaperones, and I remember being so thrilled when Dancing Queen came on – finally, I song I knew!

A few months later, when I saw Mamma Mia! in theaters, even though I didn’t recognize a lot of the songs, I still felt a similar thrill at the uplifting tone of the music. And I really needed it. In addition to the whole “I just graduated from high school and I have no clue what I’m doing with my life and the world is dark and scary” thoughts that were dominating my consciousness, that specific weekend was particularly stressful. Rosemary and I were at this youth church retreat focused on service and social justice, which overall was interesting, except only one other youth from our church came with us, and he wasn’t even there the whole time, and our youth leader had a lot of other responsibilities and couldn’t spend a lot of time with us either, so I was mostly just hanging out with my sister and the assistant youth leader, trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing. It was fine, but it felt a little bit like nobody wanted to hang out with us. But then at one point we had an afternoon of free time between retreat activities, and the leader who had barely been around decided we should go see a movie, but then she had trouble finding the theater. So we walked in a few minutes after Mamma Mia! had started. My sister had seen it before, but I had not. I was kind of frustrated with the whole dysfunctional youth group situation going into it, but it only took a few minutes of the movie to make me feel like I would never be frustrated again.

I saw it at least twice in theaters, and later got it on DVD and could not stop rewatching it. I managed to see it six times in 2008 and five times in 2009. And then, just like with Frozen a few years later, I hit the 11 views in a little over a year threshold and needed to take a break. Also like Frozen, there were a lot of people bashing it online, but at least with Mamma Mia! I didn’t care quite as much. With Frozen I deeply related to the characters and felt personally attacked by the criticism. Mamma Mia! hate irritated me, but if other people couldn’t handle its happiness and fun, that was their loss. Anyway, after 2009 I kept listening to the soundtrack, but I didn’t rewatch Mamma Mia! again until 2016, when I saw it once. Then I watched it twice in 2018, and once in each year after that. My love for this movie was revitalized in 2018 because that was when I saw the stage show for the first time, and then a few months later the sequel/prequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again came out. It’s weird because the story had already made very little sense, and then that movie directly contradicted so many things from the first one that the whole thing became even more utterly incomprehensible, and yet, somehow, that doesn’t really bother me too much. The plot is not the point; I’m here for the mood.

Watching this movie really feels like going on vacation. It was mostly filmed on location on a gorgeous Greek island, and the bright sunshine and sparkling sea mixed with upbeat ABBA jams really melt all worldly cares away. Which is a little odd because the characters go through a lot of stressful drama. But to the audience, the stakes never feel very high. Donna is stressed after seeing her three former lovers, but mostly because she doesn’t want Sophie to find out about them, when we know that Sophie was the one who invited them. Sophie is stressed because she doesn’t immediately recognize her father, and maybe some audience members do want to know which one it is, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, and she just needs to learn that.

It may seem a little strange that an aromantic asexual like me would love a movie so full of relentlessly alloromantic and allosexual characters, but I really enjoy that, even though most of them do predictably end up paired off romantically by the end, there’s a lot of focus on trios of friends. Sophie has her two bridesmaids, and Donna has her two best friends – arguably the best characters in the movie, played by the always fabulous Christine Baranski and Julie Walters. And then there are the three fathers, who don’t know each other at the beginning but develop a nice bromance by the end, when they agree to share the honor of being Sophie’s dad. These three friendship trios, along with the mother-daughter relationship between Donna and Sophie, seem stronger and more important than most of the romantic pairs, and as I’ve said before, that’s really what I want out of most movies. I’m never suggesting that romance should be eliminated entirely; I’m merely sick of romantic partnerships constantly being portrayed as the number one most important relationship in everyone’s lives. So I enjoy that Mamma Mia! focuses so much on non-romantic relationships, even in the midst of its romances.

I also appreciate the ways that the story challenges the traditional family structure of one man married to one woman, raising their biological children together. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; obviously, that works for a lot of people, and that’s great for them. But that’s not going to work for everyone, and there isn’t anything wrong with that either, but there’s a major stigma against wanting, or ending up with, any other kind of family structure, which goes hand-in-hand with the stigma against women having sex outside of marriage. When Donna got pregnant with Sophie, her mother disowned her – at least according to the first movie, when her mother is described as a deceased pious Catholic; not according to Here We Go Again, when her mother is a living eccentric entertainer played by Cher, who conveniently had a passionate love affair with a man named Fernando, but that’s not important. Sophie doesn’t seem to have been neglected or love starved in any way as a result of being raised by a single mom, and yet she is obsessed with finding her father simply so he can give her away at her wedding. And like, I personally have a problem with a tradition wherein one man essentially transfers ownership of a woman to a different man, but I can kind of see how, if the bride has a particularly close relationship with her father, this could be a meaningful moment. But in Sophie’s case, it makes no sense. What meaning is there in walking down the aisle with a man you met for the first time the day before? Once she thinks about it for two seconds, Sophie realizes that it makes way more sense for Donna – the person who raised her – to give her away, but prior to that she has been so steeped in amatonormativity that she not only thinks she needs to get married at 20, but also resents her mom for not settling down with a partner before she was born. Not because she really needed her dad to be in the picture, but because she thinks she was supposed to need that. When she finally realizes that she’s fine with not knowing who her biological father is, Sophie also realizes that she doesn’t want to get married yet. On the one hand, since she’s already at the altar at this point, and she’s planning on traveling with her fiancé (played by Dominic Cooper), it kind of seems like they could have gotten married and then done that, fighting the idea that married couples have to be boring and settled. But on the other hand, the main reason she wanted to rush into marriage was so she could meet her father and have him give her away at her wedding, which is a really bad reason to get married, so from that perspective it makes sense to postpone it. Now, would I like this movie better if Donna also didn’t get married? Absolutely, especially because she marries the rudest and most entitled of the possible dads. But if that’s what makes her happy, I’m fine with it.

It's worth mentioning that this is my 15th episode and it’s the first time I’m talking about a movie that was directed solely by a woman – Frozen was co-directed by a man and a woman – and that it was also written by a woman. I know I said that this isn’t a good movie, but Hollywood is so saturated with mediocre films made by mediocre men that it’s rather refreshing to see a big-budget blockbuster made by women that, if it’s a bit of a mess, at least is a fun mess. For once, the female characters are complex and relatively well developed, and the men mainly serve as eye candy for the straight women in the audience. Also, given the observations I made in past episodes about how much younger Cary Grant’s leading ladies were compared to him later in his career, it’s nice to see a movie with great roles for actresses over 40. Meryl Streep was pushing 60 when this movie came out, which made her about 15-20 years older than the character she was playing, but I mean, it’s Meryl Streep – she could play any character of any age convincingly. Dancing Queen is a song I used to associate with youth – the lyrics literally say “young and sweet, only 17” – but its context in this film turns it into a song about feeling young at heart regardless of numerical age, and empowering women to step away from their responsibilities and dance down to the water and jump in, for some reason. Like much of the movie, that scene doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I absolutely love it. I mean, yes, the fighting amatonormativity aspects are great and all, but let’s be honest, that has very little to do with why I love this movie. The real reason I love Mamma Mia! is because it falls into probably my favorite category of movie, which I like to call Everybody Making This Was Having Way Too Much Fun.

And nothing more perfectly demonstrates that than the end credits. I know that saying that my favorite part of the movie is the end credits sounds like I’m implying that it’s because I’m glad the movie is over, but seriously, the end credits of Mamma Mia! are EVERYTHING. They start with Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, and Julie Walters in amazingly ridiculous 1970s costumes singing and dancing to a reprise of Dancing Queen, which is delightful in and of itself. Then after the song ends, Meryl asks the audience, “Do you want another one?” a few times, and then they start performing Waterloo. When they get to the chorus, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, and Colin Firth join them wearing similar costumes, as do Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper a bit later, and the whole experience truly defies description in the best possible way. If you haven’t seen this movie, please, I am begging you, look up the end credits on YouTube, I promise you will not be disappointed. Colin Firth’s commitment alone is worth watching. In fact, Colin Firth’s performance is consistently one of my favorite parts of the movie. The way the clearly deliberate Harry tries to convince people that he’s spontaneous is hilarious and perfectly done. While I would prefer to see LGBTQ+ characters played by LGBTQ+ actors, I feel like Colin Firth does a relatively good job of playing gay in Mamma Mia! without being too disrespectful about it. And then he rocks his ridiculous outfit at the end and puts his entire being into that dance as if he has been waiting his whole life for an opportunity to do something like this. When asked in an interview, “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?”, Colin Firth famously answered, “I personally thought you were very good in Mamma Mia!” Obviously I can’t speak for God, but I personally think that “very good” is an understatement.

I could talk about how Pierce Brosnan was miscast, but I think that’s been discussed enough, so all I’ll say is he tried. His character’s bad communication skills irritate me far more than the actor’s bad singing. Seriously, this entire situation could have been avoided if back in the day Sam had told Donna that he was going home to break up with his fiancée and then coming back to her, but no, he for some reason thought she would be waiting for him when all she knew was that he was engaged to someone else. And then in present day, he just lets her think he’s still married, and stands there silently while she sings the entirety of The Winner Takes It All, bringing the plot, such as it was, to a grinding halt, when it would have taken him like two seconds to say, “I’m divorced and I’m still in love with you.” He doesn’t tell her he's divorced until after he proposes! It’s like, dude, you can’t keep waiting until the most dramatic moment possible to tell people things! No wonder your first marriage fell apart! Even though I know that the story is nonsense, I can’t help overanalyzing it anyway, because as much as I don’t feel like I should, I really do absolutely love everything about this movie.

And the feeling that I should be ashamed of something I’m not actually ashamed of was particularly pertinent around the time this movie came out, because graduates of my high school are kind of expected to head straight to a prestigious 4-year university, and I was just going to a community college. I knew it was the right decision for me at the time, but other people made me feel like I should feel bad about it. I have this distinct memory, probably from late 2008 or early 2009, of standing in the aisle of a crowded bus heading to community college and listening to Meryl Streep singing the Mamma Mia! title song and just feeling so happy and at peace. There was nowhere I would have rather been at that moment than on that bus listening to that song. I felt okay with following my own path at my own pace, and I felt okay with loving a movie other people said was garbage. Sometimes I still struggle to maintain that mindset, but rewatching Mamma Mia! is one of the things that helps remind me.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most rewatched movies, especially if you’re someone who does not enjoy Mamma Mia! I do sincerely hope that each and every person listening has at least one movie that they know isn’t good but still love anyway. It’s a very different feeling from loving a movie that is almost universally praised by critics and audiences alike, although they’re both great feelings. In fact, the movie I’ll be talking about next week falls into the latter category, so stay tuned for my thoughts on a much more highly acclaimed film, which is the shortest of five that I watched 19 times in the 20 years I was tracking. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Forgive me for not leaping for joy. Bad back, you know.”

#mamma mia!#meryl streep #amanda seyfried #colin firth #the rewatch rewind

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femme-enby · 5 months

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For anyone who isn’t into Doctor Who, or who hasn’t been active in the fandom or really engaging at all online… folks are STILL fussin over Doctor Who “turning liberal” “becoming a part of the left wing media” etc etc.

Now, me, having ADHD, struggling a bit durin the winter months, I decided to start watching doctor who from the beginning. I’d never done that btw, I think in the end I’ve watched just about every episode OF (New) Doctor Who, but not in order. Just went through a time where every single time it was on I’d watch it. Didn’t matter if I sat there for hours watching BBC show Doctor Who reruns, I was watching.

But I digress, a bit, what I’m sayin is I have started watching it, in order, back to back episodes. I work third shift, ain’t much else to do since the world didn’t really go back to having “24 hour” stores and such, so I just gotta chill at home really.

But here’s the thing… the fuck do they mean Doctor Who BECAME liberal/leftist???

I’m watching this show and while sure there have been one or two moments that made me go “ah yeah, definitely still an episode from 2005” where they make a small comment about like, Mickey screaming “like a girl” (I’m seeing a frilly skirt, and pigtails!”)

Doctor Who has still been LARGELY progressive, since the first episodes of “New Who” in 2005.

We got Captain Jack in 2005. A dude who seems fairly masculine, could potentially “pass” as straight at first glance… until he turns that EXACT same charm he’s using on some woman onto the man right next to her. Because as Doc said, humans are… curious creatures. We find out there’s a whole bunch of other sentient species out in the stars, we go out and socialize and… we “dance.” Again, 2005.

Doc directly shut down a controlling misogynistic husband, in the 50s mind you, when that sort of behavior was the norm. Him and Rose even had a bit of fun with needling at him, puttin him down. 2006.

First direct mention of racial issues was 2007, very brief of course but it was still mentioned that Martha had concerns being black at a time where there were indeed enslaved Africans, and she even was like “wtf” when Shakespeare was “complimenting” her with outdated terms for a beautiful black woman.

Then we get to the Great Depression episode, and they’re in a Hooverville, and they have a man mention “they’ve got money to continue building the Empire State Building, while they’ve got hundreds of folks starving in the parks just below.” So still 2007, critiquing how money will go anywhere BUT the folks in need of help.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my binging, but let’s skip ahead a bit for now, the eleventh doctor, who btw if anyone has forgotten, thought for a moment he had regenerated into a woman bc his hair was a bit long. So yeah, we knew then it was a possibility for Doc.

2013, The General, (who apparently had supposedly always regenerated into a woman? AFAIK or remember these previous regenerations were unseen) an older bald, seemingly white man, regenerated into a younger black woman.

In 2014, we meet Missy and find out she is The Master’s latest regeneration. A character who was a man regenerated into a woman.

In 2015 Missy mentions having cared for the doctor since “he was a little girl.” So the doctor had been a girl at one point.

This is all “Pre Thirteen,” before the show “went terribly woke” as some folks have said.

Those are folks that clearly just could never get the undercurrent theme of Doctor Who, which was that we, as todays humans, are generally considered “behind the times” by most other planet’s and time’s cultures. Doctor Who has always been about the fact that on these adventures, plenty of times WE are the “aliens” who need to learn and adapt to these new cultures.

Another thing… the companions have always been there as a stand in for viewers. As folks gain rights and are more proud of who they are, yeah, you’re gonna see more marginalized communities represented as companions and human friends of the Doctor… bc they’re SUPPOSED to represent all of us, and new companions are gonna more closely resemble new fans, so they can have their turn traveling with The Doctor.

#ryan rambles #doctor who

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4acesofspades · 9 months

Note

answer every single question on that ask game you reblogged xD

Welp, you asked, so here goes nothing..

(It didn't number right, but the questions are still labeled right)

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora?

Spotify

is your room messy or clean?

Pretty clean, sometimes there’s clothes on the floor

what color are your eyes?

Blue

do you like your name? Why?

Not really, it’s way too common

what is your relationship status?

Married

describe your personality in 3 words or less

Old fashioned weirdo

what color hair do you have?

Natural blonde

what kind of car do you drive? Color?

Silver Honda Accord

where do you shop?

Mostly Walmart

how would you describe your style?

Cheap and changes depending on my mood. Sometimes it's sundresses and sometimes it's leather jackets.

favorite social media account

Like type of social media? Or specific account? My favorite type is probably tumblr but I don’t have a specific favorite account

what size bed do you have?

I share a queen with my husband but in my room (yes I also have my own room) I have a twin

any siblings?

One sister

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? Why?

Maybe on the border in the us to help with the refugee crisis

favorite snapchat filter?

I don’t use filters

favorite makeup brand(s)

I couldn’t tell ya. My mother in law buys my makeup.

how many times a week do you shower?

Whenever my hair gets unmanageable

favorite tv show?

Ho boy, Leverage or Emergency! Probably

shoe size?

8.5 women’s

how tall are you?

5 foot, 7 inches

sandals or sneakers?

I have tanline stripes on my feet lol, definitely sandals. But cheap, comfy ones

do you go to the gym?

If I’m actively training for a race, then yeah. Otherwise I hate it.

describe your dream date

On our honeymoon we got to stay in a (supposedly) haunted mansion in New York. It was amazing. Also it would be awesome to like, go through someone’s attic or something?

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

I have a bunch of culver’s coupons?

what color socks are you wearing?

None, I’m wearing sandals :)

how many pillows do you sleep with?

One

do you have a job? what do you do?

Nope, I’ve been looking for 5 months and haven’t found anything in my field, but I would love to work for a nonprofit.

how many friends do you have?

Not many. I have a few acquaintances I met in college, a couple good friends from high school, and some of my husband’s friends that I consider good friends as well

whats the worst thing you have ever done?

Cut my best friend out of my life in order to get rid of another (toxic) relationship. Regret it every single day.

whats your favorite candle scent?

There’s these Fir tree or whatever candles they sell around Christmas that smell just like the holidays and they’re my favorite

3 favorite boy names

Mason

Cameron

Eliot

3 favorite girl names

Eleanora

Rosalind

Kalia (Ka-lee-a)

favorite actor?

I don’t really have one lol. I like the guy that plays Eliot on Leverage, and I like the guy that plays Johnny on Emergency, but I don’t really follow celebrities too much.

favorite actress?

See above

who is your celebrity crush?

Despite my previous statements, I have a massive crush on Cote de Pablo.

favorite movie?

Idk if I could choose just one! Encanto and Moana for disney movies, McFarland, USA and The Outsiders for other movies, National Lampoons Christmas Vacation and

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book?

I read quite a bit. I couldn’t possibly choose a favorite book, but the most influential has been The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang

money or brains?

Brains, always. You can get along without money but not without brains

do you have a nickname? what is it?

My dad calls me flounderlips and squidlips and flapjoint.

how many times have you been to the hospital?

Couple times for migraines.

top 10 favorite songs

Currently? Or of all time? We’re gonna go with currently as the list changes constantly.

Best Bad Habit by Danny Warsnop

Quiet as a Rat by Amigo the Devil

Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton

We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel

Godmanchester Chinese Bridge by The Howl and The Hum

Outlaw Pete by Bruce Springsteen

A Symptom of Being Human by Shinedown

Sometimes on a Sunday by The Glorious Sons

Sing for the Common Man by Dolly Parton

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot

do you take any medications daily?

Yeah I take migraine meds twice a day and vitamins at night

what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc)

Idk, normal? I’ve never really thought about it

what is your biggest fear?

Amounting to nothing, probably. I’m also pretty claustrophobic

how many kids do you want?

whats your go to hair style?

I have curly hair so wash and scrunch. Usually it’s in a ponytail or lazy bun

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc)

Big old house built in 1925.

who is your role model?

I don’t have a specific role model. I try to pull bits and pieces from all different things in life- favorite authors, people I meet, tv shows, parents, teachers, and friends, etc.

what was the last compliment you received?

My husband told me my novel idea was incredibly original.

what was the last text you sent?

I told my friends I don’t like frosted cookies as much as I used to.

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?

1st grade

what is your dream car?

1967 Chevy Impala SS Coupe. I have indeed put much thought and research into this. I would also be interested in a 1967 Shelby Cobra but I’ve never even seen one in person

opinion on smoking?

If you’re going to smoke I’d rather you smoke cigarettes around me than vape. Idk but vaping really gets under my skin.

do you go to college?

Graduated December 2022

what is your dream job?

I want to work for a nonprofit in their immigration department helping immigrants and refugees settle in and work through their transition to America. Would also be interested in someday working as an immigration lawyer

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?

Rural. Our town has about 3000 people.

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels?

I used to but I don’t anymore.

do you have freckles?

do you smile for pictures?

Yes

how many pictures do you have on your phone?

1062

have you ever peed in the woods?

Many times

do you still watch cartoons?

All the time.

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds?

Never had Wendy’s nuggies and I don’t really like McDonald’s

Favorite dipping sauce?

Fun fact, I don’t like any dipping sauce.

what do you wear to bed?

Shorts and a tshirt

have you ever won a spelling bee?

HA good joke

what are your hobbies?

Writing and music

can you draw?

Not even a little

do you play an instrument?

Flute, clarinet, saxophone, and I’m learning guitar

what was the last concert you saw?

Nothing More last year

tea or coffee?

I like both

Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Neither

do you want to get married?

Been married over 2 years

what is your crush’s first and last initial?

My husband’s name is Daniel ;)

are you going to change your last name when you get married?

Yup, it was a pain in the butt

what color looks best on you?

I like dark red on me

do you miss anyone right now?

Yes, my best friend in high school

do you sleep with your door open or closed?

Door closed, I watch a lot of Emergency and am paranoid of housefires

do you believe in ghosts?

Kind of

what is your biggest pet peeve?

When somebody’s turning left and the person behind them can’t wait 2 SECONDS for them to turn and they speed around them on the shoulder

last person you called`

My daddy

favorite ice cream flavor?

Chocolate

regular oreos or golden oreos?

For knockoffs, golden. For name brand, regular.

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

Rainbow

what shirt are you wearing?

I’m not, I’m wearing a sundress.

what is your phone background?

Nate and Eliot from Leverage being dorks

are you outgoing or shy?

I’m really shy until I get to know people

do you like it when people play with your hair?

Depends on the state of affairs. If it’s already a mess I love it, if I just watched it, you’re risking your life by touching my curls

do you like your neighbors?

Yeah they’re nice.

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

At night

have you ever been high?

Nope

have you ever been drunk?

Nope

last thing you ate?

Salmon

favorite lyrics right now

From Quiet as a Rat by Amigo the Devil: “Time doesn’t respect what doesn’t respect it/ And kind isn’t a word I would use for man/ If everyone’s made in his image and even he couldn’t perfect it/ Then what the hell makes anyone think we can”

summer or winter?

Summer for sure. I live in Wisconsin

day or night?

Day. I like the sun

dark, milk, or white chocolate?

Dark

favorite month?

I like May and June, but also September and October

what is your zodiac sign

Aquarius

who was the last person you cried in front of?

My husband

#ask game #answered asks

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sunglassesmish · 2 years

Note

okay but like, these folks who are so intent on "debunking" cockles even being close friends by stubbornly reiterating that they're just "work buddies" is just extremely ignorant to everything jensen and misha themselves have said about the close bonds formed on spn that will last a lifetime. that's not just work buddies, no matter what else may be speculated about their relationship. (1/2)

i also honestly find it extremely amusing how insistent these kinds of anons are regarding the /personal/ relationship between virtual strangers that they can't possibly know the daily ins and outs of. unless they somehow have access to jenmish's phones they can't possibly know how often they communicate. besides, it's totally normal to just hang out and... not post anything on social media or share all the details every single time?? it's called have a private life for a reason lol (2/2)

you’re so right!! they’ve said multiple times how people they worked with on spn over the years have become close friends and like family to them. and i’m pretty sure after working side by side for 10+ years makes anyone more than ‘just work buddies’

why is that you can’t even just call them friends? oh yeah because that would imply that they care about them and actively go and hang out with each other anywhere that isn’t on the spn set.

and about the personal lives thing, these people act as if they do know everything about these men when the truth is that we don’t. and how many times do we have to say that social media does not depict real life!

#anon #ask

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shogunomicon · 2 years

Text

I’m becoming more and more painfully aware of social media pipelines every day. I’m wondering if it’s just because based on my interests or whatever I’m being categorized as “straight white male” (which only one of those things is true) and that’s leading me to get recommended more and more far-right or adjacent content. Lemme give some examples of what I’ve got so far

Instagram has been one of the worst so far. I constantly get like those Andrew Tate-partnered reels or like extremely hateful content disguised as memes. It IS the one platform that doesn’t specifically seem to target me though so I’m assuming it’s just their algorithm being shit and pushing whatever is “popular” regardless of its actual content

Speaking of targeting me directly in the last few weeks I have been CONSTANTLY getting edgy memes specifically about gender. It’s really off-putting to get like a tiktok about trans positivity immediately followed by some 14-year-olds “me when I say there’s only two genders” chad-filter bullshit. It might be because I follow a few fitness creators but that seems to lead straight into like trad-conservative content hole, I straight up got a body builder talking about vax truthing once so I assume that’s it.

Started getting a bunch of terf shit now on Tumblr, somehow the place where I’m the most openly gnc. I’m starting to wonder who the fuck is running this place; we already know they won’t do shit about hate speech on here but when I’m straight up being “recommended” a post about how trans people are groomers it really makes me think about what’s going on in the backend

YouTube started straight up recommending me alt-right news channels like the quartering and shit. It took me a while but I went out of my way to block almost every single one I could think of and it seems to have given the message but that’s really fucking concerning. Once again just opening my homepage and seeing straight up hate speech in the titles of these videos that are totally fine by YT’s standards and even fucking montetized

And finally for some reason the “trending now” tags on Twitter are always full of the most vile fucking people. Like I don’t know why my trending topics are always shit like JK Rowling or the LGB Alliance or defending whatever streamer most recently dropped the N word live. Currently it’s just hockey news since I live in Canada so I’m assuming it’s not targeted but I’ve heard that Twitter actively tries to upset you as much as possible to keep you engaged which is so fucked up

#poasting #pipelines #I’m just so tired of all it all #alt right #terf #love how corporations are straight up making money from hate speech #I wonder if I’ll get more seething terfs in my asks #hitting me with the lamest insults of all time #come back singular terf who had an actually funny one #I don’t respect you at all but at least you were entertaining

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teenyranibow · 1 year

Note

HI HELLO I LOVE YOUR ART SM and it’s is such an inspiration to me! ^-^ i’m a beginner artist and am self-teaching, and i was wondering if you have any tips or advice :]

OHHHHHH HIIIIII OH MY GOD THAT'S SUCH AN HONOR 😭😭💌 aheemmmhhhm i have MANY and it's long sorry.....

if you're focusing on the human body then when you're studying take literally any pic you see and study it. it's not about what pic looks more interesting or pretty because a study is a study and any pic of any pose will give you new knowledge. you never know when you're gonna need to draw a person in the most simple pose you can think of in the future. even not actively doing studies like observing your surroundings can be a nice tool to learn, like looking around and see a certain way clothes folds or how light and color works and go """ohhhhhhhh☝️💡💡💡""" it's mostly unintentional as you go on your day i think. im a very observant person so this is very useful to me hehe

a basic and important one is try to block basic shapes when doing studies. always try to start simple and slowly add detail at the end. besides it's reallyyy fun to draw shapes lol you can get a little funky with it. ALSO focus on the white space of what you're drawing. for example, when i draw someone standing with their hand on their waist i like to first draw the triangle of white space that the arm forms between the torso and the arm itself. it can be applied to whatever you're drawing

mmmm......outside of technical advice i'd tell you that you should find fun and comfort in what you're drawing, enjoy your process. i believe that's the most important thing when doing art. it's kinda sad to see art as a burden, try to make every part of the process comfortable to you. you can even drop certain stages of it if they are not enjoyable, for example a lot of people don't do lineart because it's tedious and not fun for them

another is DO NOT cater to what you think social media may like the most. im not talking about """don't draw what's trending""" because you can draw whatever you want (and it's a different topic), it's more about being true to yourself. all that about: you like what you enjoy, what you like, what you think is pretty or ugly or any other ajective; basically is to merge your own mindset with your art, because art is SELF expression. and you may read this and think """ohh but i only draw characters standing in a white background :( it's meaningless/boring :(((""" DOESN'T MATTER!!! IT STILL APPLIES!!!! it doesn't matter how pretty, detailed or how meaningful your art can be, your linework, color palette, the way you draw a face or a house and overall style down to the simplest things can also say something about you and personally it's very interesting to see. it's up to you if you enjoy it as it is or want to improve, or both👍

LAST is don't worry about finding an art style right way or about the dumb imperious necessity of having a single art style, really don't worry. and if you have settled with one don't be scared of the possibility that your art may change with time, because we change and if we do so then our art is subject to do the same, it's kinda pretty when you think about it

#asks #long text #i got really into it at the end but im only human peace and love 🫰#things i wished someone would've said to me when i was young..#i also did this thing as a kid where i would only sketch using a ballpoint pen to force myself to be cleaner and make less mistakes #if you're on digital draw on a gray canvas so it doesn't hurt your eyes #rest after drawing for hours it's NOT worth it to keep drawing at midnight #u have plenty of time don't hold your pee GO PISS GIRL

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trisynine · 1 year

Note

When did you start making music and art? And do you have any tips for making music and art? I’m not that good at doing both of those things and i wanna improve some more and i was wondering if you could give me some advice, if not that’s fine too, ALSO, i wanna make fanart of your characters but i don’t have any place to share it on because i only have like one social media app but i don’t think you’re on there :((( sorry for making this so long btw....

No worries I probably made my answer way too long lmao. Lots of text again. Click the read more thing for all my terrible tips. As for the fanart, you can maybe link it to me via asks on here, or you can give me your Discord if you have one. I'd love to see what you do, I love getting art from others it makes me really happy 💜

Ok so uhhh ART. I've been drawing for as long as I can remember (yes, cliché). I think I started taking it more seriously when I got a drawing tablet, so 2013 or 2014? I can't remember. Some advice I can give is not to focus on every single pixel, unless you're doing pixel art. I made that mistake when I was younger; nobody is going to see 1 pixel not filled in on a 3000px canvas, it's a waste of time to bother. Focus on simple shapes first then the complex shapes when sketching and try not to do chicken-scratches, try to make continuous lines as much as possible. Here's sketches from 2016 (first) and a sketch from 2022 (second). Just looks cleaner, more dynamic and less clunky. Try practicing that when sketching, it's helped me.

Experiment a lot, don't focus on one thing over and over to avoid sameness across drawings, like the same pose or faces. Like I said in a previous ask, study everything around you and the art you see, even when not actively drawing. I have so many references downloaded and things that are aesthetically pleasing or art that I really like. That helps too with inspiration and learning how to do stuff. Another thing that's helped me a lot is doing foreshortening like this, it's a simple technique and I do it a lot. And then all the things you've probably heard 1000 times, study anatomy and color theory and all that boring CRAP. Ok now the MUSIC. I started making music in 2015 (maybe before that if you count Mario Paint Composer lololol). Study MIXING and MASTERING as soon as possible. I never really did that until recently and I get mad at myself that I still can't do it well and think I'm an idiot. I can compose ok, my sound design is sexy, but my mastering is actual dogshit because I didn't learn it early and I've been struggling with it. The technical aspects of music making trip me up so much and I thought it would be okay to not bother looking into it. Learn dat shitttt cuz I didn't and I'm paying for it. It's not all about the composing. I also listen to all kinds of music all day and I try to study everything within the music, like all the instruments and sounds and how they're placed together. Even music I know I don't really like, I can listen to it and appreciate it in another way. Uhh put a limiter on your master track, especially when experimenting with shit. Be mindful of your volume, don't blow ya fucken ears out, take care of your hearing. Experiment with stuff a lot, don't be afraid to learn how to use new things and play around with them. I don't have a lot of tips when it comes to making music lol.

I hope these help somewhat, even if sorta generic. I'm not good at advice and these are just things that have helped me or I wish I knew earlier.

#trisyask

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themilophant · 2 years

Text

Last week's episode of the BS-Free Witchcraft podcast (follow @traegorn if you don’t yet!) came to the unavoidable conclusion that Tiktok is hostile to human life, which, unavoidable, yeah. But it got me thinking about social media and witchcraft slightly more carefully than my usual thought about social media and witchcraft, which is “don't.” And – I still pretty much think, “don't” – but we can dig a little deeper, I feel!

The obvious problem with social media, which I am not breaking any new ground by saying, is that it thrives on Engagement, which means that the reach of something that engages the limbic system is disproportionate to the reach of something that might be insightful or truthful or even useful, but feels dry. The more all-powerful the algorithm, the more this takes on a life of its own (literally, for all I know...), but the rules of Engagement are in effect all over the internet, with generally unpositive outcomes for Discourse in every field. (To clarify: I think the internet itself has a number of positive qualities and benefits for human flourishing, but all of that has to be weighed against the fact that the internet also operates as basically a 24/7/365 Propaganda Engine that pushes people to be ever more inflammatory and/or pandering in order to break through the background noise.)

In that sense, then, witchcraft isn't anything unusual – it's just another area of human activity that's undergoing the same stresses online as all the other areas of human activity. But I actually think there's a sense where witchcraft does suffer particularly acutely from this dynamic. To explain how I get to this conclusion, I kind of have to slam my hand down on the third rail, so here we go: What Is Witchcraft, Actually?

Look, long story short: I'm not going to come to your house and slap the mortar and pestle out of your hand, so if you think I'm full of shit on this, so be it, just keep on keeping on. I'm not the sheriff of the Craft and I wouldn't want the power to enforce this definition even if that were possible, but I am a guy who prefers to have some kind of sense of what a word means before I run around using it, so I've given the question a lot of thought for myself, and I have (quite cleverly! I'm clever!) distilled three elements that I feel like are sort of load-bearing pillars of the Craft that show up more or less throughout the various versions and generally distinguish them from other paths either of occultism or spirituality. I like to think of them as Eros, Gnosis, and Heresy (well, Hairesis if we wanted to keep the Greek conceit going, but I just say Heresy in my mind). There's no reason to go into all three at length here; I'm saying this just to lay the groundwork that I believe witchcraft isn't just incidentally heretical as defined by certain outside institutional forces, but that in fact practicing Heresy is foundational and required.

By “practicing heresy,” I don't mean that you have to do the opposite of whatever your parents do, or that I think Christians get to set the standard by which everything else is judged deviant. I think those are both mental traps that people fall into, but I mean something much simpler than that. I'm using etymology to root the English word “heresy” in the Greek word hairesis, meaning “a thing that's chosen” or “one's (essentially) free choice.” To be a heretic, merging the modern and root definition, is to be someone who has insisted on making a choice for themselves. I think the reason witches are notoriously so fractious and disorganized and so disinclined to cob together and do the same thing in either the short or the long term is that our very nature is to treat every single piece of received wisdom or authoritative pronouncement as a big maybe. If we choose it. If we agree. If it works for us.

I mock that phrase a lot, honestly, maybe more than I should. Ask any witch why they do things the way they do, and you have like an 80% chance of hearing “well, it works for me.” Which I love, in theory! I love the idea of us as a group of mad experimenters, putting everything to the test and accepting it only once it's proven to work for us. In practice, though, there's one major problem, which is: it works to do what for you? What kind of results are you getting? Hell, what kind of result do you want or expect from practicing witchcraft? The concrete markers of mundane flourishing: financial security, rewarding relationships, good health, good reputation? Creative inspiration? The power to know and to enact your True Will? Self-development – moral, psychological, spiritual? Psychic powers, insight into the nature of reality, mystic secrets? A sense of belonging to a cosmos that's enchanted, wondrous, meaningful? Surprisingly few of us can answer that question, and if we don't know what we're aiming at, of course we can't know if the things we do are getting us closer or further away – if those things are working for us at all.

I think that makes witches particularly susceptible to all the flaws of the social media attention economy. We want all the options, we are choosers of things, so we're hungry for input, information, ideas. But most of us are unable to practice the core skill of being good at heresy, which is discernment. We don't know which of our myriad of options are better or worse than the others, because we're mostly not consciously navigating toward anything in particular, except an unarticulated feeling of desire to be somehow more than we are, other than we are. And that's a deeply human desire! It's also one that most schools of philosophy or religions or spiritual practices will at least attempt to provide some form for. You feel an inarticulate longing for Not This? Great, here's what you really want, what will satisfy the deep restlessness of your soul, and here's how a person gets from here to there. Some of those roadmaps are more structured than others, but they tend to have some language around what the Not This is all about, where this road is taking you. And then you have some combination of texts and live mentorship and co-learning community and Tradition and your own discernment that all collaborate to help you figure out what's going to Work for you as you do the Work.

Those things aren't exactly absent from witchcraft – you can still read books and find teachers and join communities and learn from history and practice discernment. You can do all those things, and hopefully you hit on the particular combination of factors that, well, works for you to help you learn and advance. But witches, being a whole community full of people who are deeply, fundamentally inclined toward Heresy, do tend to not do that first part, the part where they tell you where you're going. You can go wherever you want! It's your path! Hell, I did it a few paragraphs ago: I reassured you that I wasn't trying to tell you what witchcraft means, because it's not my place to do that for you, only for me.

I don't think you can make witchcraft non-heretical in that sense, or make witches not a bunch of heretics ready to throw hands in defense of their right to choose their own path. I wouldn't want to! It's not a flaw, it's part of (in my humble opinion) our identity and our magic. But you take that and throw it in a vat of the internet's constant content, constant Hot Takes, constant ever-increasing competition for the limited resource of Attention and Engagement, and it's just fucking overwhelming. It's being lost in the wilderness with no map and no compass and told it's your privilege to build your own map and compass. Grateful as you may theoretically be for your freedom, the reality is you're going to walk in a lot of circles. And you're probably going to fall in with the first other person you run into who really seems to know where they're going.

My unpopular solution to this is – silence. It's time. It's spaciousness. It's asking a lot of questions. It's taking in a lot of ideas without attaching yourself too tightly to the first ones that feel good – it's giving yourself room to wonder why an idea feels good to you, if it's nourishing a real hunger for you, or if it's stroking your ego by echoing your biases back to you. It's spending a significant amount of time in a space of humility. It's loving questions at least as much as you love answers, or at the very least defeating your fear of doubt and uncertainty to some degree. None of these are things that social media will ever give you, and honestly the internet is going to get in the way of most of that for you. And when you are ready to make a Choice about your path, or at least the next leg of your path, the solution is to find guides who seem to be going somewhere that you would actually want to end up – in a real way, not just the ones who are good at curating an image that appeals to you. Which is a talent, yes, but once you learn everything there is to know about curating an image, my guess is you're going to feel like there should be more. And you'll be right.

#things said #learning witchcraft #witchcraft community

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purplesurveys · 2 years

Text

1469

survey by lovelypursuit

Do you like oatmeal raisin cookies? I don’t think I can say that I do. Oatmeal is fine with me but I would most definitely remove every single piece of raisin from my cookies.

Which smells better - Pez or Play-Doh? I like the smell of Play-Doh and have never smelled the former, so the former wins by default.

Does your hair reach your boobs? Yeah it already does. I don’t feel like getting a trim anytime soon though, I like its current length just fine.

When are you having spring break? We don’t have that.

And how will you be spending that time? Still can’t answer that. The only breaks I get in a year are Holy Week and Christmas breaks, and during those times I usually like to stay at home and just spend the time recharging. I’ll occasionally go out of town though.

Have you ever had a crush on celebrity no one knew about? CM Punk fits this question best, even though he’s not technically a celebrity. I had such (and honestly, still do) a huge crush on the dude which I never thought was possible in the arena of pro wrestling lol.

Do you have a Roku? I have a really vague memory/idea of what this is, but I can’t seem to remember right now. Anyway, we never did and I don’t think it was ever available here.

What's something that fills you with anxiety? Work, unfortunately. Dealing with clients has to be the most anxiety-inducing aspect of it, but I think I can say I still like what I do PR-wise - especially the times where I get to write - and I still find fulfillment in what I do.

Do you like Anthony Green or Jack White? Jack White’s name kind of rings a bell but ultimately idk who either is, so I don’t have a preference.

Do you think you're attractive? I think I’m just fine. I don’t hype myself up too much but I’m also not as insecure about my looks as I used to be years ago.

Do you drink coffee on a daily basis? Yeah - you got it right with daily pretty much.

Do you have strict parents or are they more chill? They were strict when I was younger, like in never letting me go to sleepovers until I was in high school, not letting me on social media...but I mean, I’m in my mid-20s and have been earning my own money. I’d have an issue with them if they would continue to be as strict with me as they used to be.

At what age did you move out of your parents? (or what age will you?) I haven’t moved out yet and am not really in a rush; where I live, the pressure to move out isn’t super felt and children really do take their time in continuing to live with their families. I hope to have my own place by the time I’m in my late-20s, at least.

What age do you think is too old to still live with your parents? I don’t judge people based on this. Again, it’s a culture thing. The only time I’d think if someone is “too old” is if they’re like in their 30s and is jobless and doesn’t do anything to help around in the house.

Do you think Clinton Kelly looks like a less scruffy Bradley Cooper? I don’t know who the former is.

Do you always download the free songs on iTunes? I don’t remember what those songs might have been anymore, but I don’t think I ever downloaded them anyway because for the most part I didn’t know who the artists were.

Have you ever loved a boy who was dating some other girl? I’ve never had feelings for a guy, period.

Is your hair all the same color? Not so much currently. My roots are growing fast as all hell, so I’ve got like two or three inches of black hair and the rest is still in its dyed light brown shade.

Have you ever tie dyed anything? I have in the past. It was an activity we had to do for school in like Grade 6.

Do you know anyone who says 'wow' a lot? Hahahaha ME. It’s a common expression I use.

Have you ever watched Bob's Burgers? I haven’t.

How many cardigans do you own? I don’t have any.

Denim, leather or varsity jacket? Denim.

Has a teacher ever caught and read a note you were passing in class? I will firmly say no to this, but I did get caught once in a situation that involved the passing of notes. Basically this girl in my class needed a dictionary to do her homework for English class, and I guess she saw that I had a copy of my own dictionary under my seat??? so she intended to pass a note to ask for it. She was doing this during our history period - already a big no-no - so anyway my seatmate eventually handed it to me, and not knowing yet what the nature of the paper was about, I unwittingly opened the note. My teacher happened to see it, paused the class to stare daggers at me and told me to keep the note away, soooooo yep that was pretty fucking annoying to get caught up in that whole mess just because someone wasn’t doing her fucking homework.

What annoyed me even more is that I know that teacher never liked me so it really felt like that public scolding was just an excuse to finally have something to be pissed at me for.

Do you know anyone who is afraid of horses? I don’t think so. There might be people I know who are, but I wouldn’t know who.

What's your favorite perfume that you own? Heat Rush.

Do you clean things that are already clean when you're bored? No, I never do that.

How did you spend Valentine's Day? That was a weekday if I remember correctly, so I was just at work and it was just an ordinary day for me.

Do you get President's Day off at your school? No, we don’t have that holiday(?) here. Even if we did, I would never recognize it. Presidents aren’t to be celebrated lmao, especially the one we are going to be having by next month.

What would you do if an ex-boyfriend started using one of your besties? I think Angela is smart enough to know if she is being used so I would let her handle it and stand up for herself.

Would you rather live in a tropical or arctic climate? I mean, I hate how hot it can get here (I live in a tropical climate) but I wouldn’t give it all up just to go to the other extreme.

What is the last thing you took that wasn't yours? My sister’s black polo shirt which I’ve since adopted, hahaha.

Do you have an older brother? Not biologically but we have a cousin who pretty much feels like one since we grew up together.

What do you do when someone overweight complains about being overweight? I’ve never been put in this situation and don’t think it’s also my place to like give advice or whatever so I imagine I would mainly listen and let them rant.

Is there any Irish, Scottish, or Danish in your heritage? No, not at all. But then again, who knows – people always get surprised from the results of their DNA kits hahaha so I could always turn out to unexpectedly have some European blood in me. But I highly highly doubt that.

Do you find Asians attractive? Uh sure, whatever hahaha.

Is it racist to ask if a specific race is attractive or not to someone? Depends on the context or if it’s meant as a backhanded compliment.

Have either of your parents ever been to jail? No.

Have you ever been to jail? No.

Keep Calm and Carry On or Screw Calm and Get Angry? I tend to have a short temper so it’s the latter for me, lol.

Do you think Urban Outfitters is overpriced? Idk, I’ve never been to one.

Are your collarbones prominent? They are, yeah. It’s one of my favorite features.

Have you heard about the Alyssa Bustamante case? I haven’t but wow that’s a very Filipino sounding name lol. That’s my only takeaway from this question.

Have you ever in your life worn overalls? Yeah. I have photos as a baby where I had them on.

How did you react when you heard Whitney Houston had died? I was shocked and sad but I wasn’t really able to share those feelings with anyone because no kid in school had really been familiar with who she was, and I only knew her because I was into Beyoncé at the time and knew she had been one of her influencers and would mention Whitney in literally every interview lol. So I got pretty upset, but I wasn’t a major fan or anything like that.

Do you love yourself? Yes.

What is the brand of desktop/laptop you're on right now? Apple.

Are there any words you don't usually pronounce correctly? No. I’m conscious when it comes to mispronouncing so I usually look the word up or ask around.

Do you think Helena Bonham Carter is attractive? Sure.

Would you rather listen to Dolly Parton or Dusty Springfield? Dolly largely because I don’t know who the other one is.

Are you watching The Walking Dead this season? Nah - they’re on their final season this year, right? I stopped watching when they killed off one of my favorite characters in like season 7 or whenever that was. He was one of the last original cast members so when they got rid of him my interest in the show gradually waned.

What TV shows do you keep up with? I haven’t been watching any series lately, besides the K-drama Happiness which I finished in two days while I was dealing with post-election depression lol. I have a couple of series on my radar that I want to start on though, which are Sh**ting Stars and Twenty-Five Twenty-One.

Are you a light sleeper? I can be. If I have something going on the very next day, like a flight or a big event, I’m on edge even while sleeping hahaha.

Have you ever forgiven a cheater? I’ve never been cheated on and am honestly not sure how I’d handle it. I think it would depend on the situation but I hope to god I would just walk away.

Would you consider cuddling cheating? Yeah.

What does the purse/bag you last used look like? It’s a pink handbag that has this cute image of a flower on the lower right side.

Would you wear heeled/wedged oxfords? Not my style; I’ll have to pass on those.

Do you own a blazer? Yeah I have a couple of them in case I need to wear something formal for work.

Gunmetal, cooper, silver, or gold? Silver.

When's the last time it snowed where you live? Never.

Can you make a clover with your tongue? Nope.

What's your favorite coffee brand/flavor? Caramel or hazelnut.

Have you ever made out with a firecrotch? With a...what?

Do you listen to The Story So Far or Balance and Composure? No for both.

Is your belly button pierced? It isn’t.

#survey #surveys

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