Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore deity depictions made by artists online. However, it sometimes gets unsettling when deities whose aspects are centered around entirely nonviolent concepts are drawn as hyperviolent, warrior-type of characters. This is especially common in depictions of Norse deities. I can understand why this tendency would be, considering some of these depictions are made for promoting video games, and such. It’s plenty more surprising, however, when such drawings can be traced back to pagan sources. Now, this highlights a larger, more concerning issue: the general perception of Norse deities by pagan informational websites. It gets easy to distinguish between the pagan sources I want to look into and those I want to avoid, based on the general image of some deities that they choose to present. I know I’ve talked about this in the past, but if you spread information on Norse deities but depict them all as “warrior Gods”—by only relying on hyperviolent representations even in the case of more “peace-oriented” deities for example, it shows you don’t care to go deeper than your surface-level understanding of a mythological pantheon that’s filled with diverse figures and nuance. And it’s especially concerning when this type of perception is spread by websites that advertise themselves as being 100% factual and unbiased. These types of sources generally reduce deities to a fixed list of aspects (“This or that deity is the god of this, period”) and it doesn’t help new pagans at all to explore the pantheon and their own perception of it. (This tendency is especially common on New Age websites, as they also tend to put up lists of unmovable correspondences while reducing the importance of UPG and personal belief in deity associations.) It doesn’t spark skepticism, reflection or curiosity. Let me illustrate: if someone who’s questioning their spiritual path and considering becoming pagan sees a super intimidating and ferocious depiction of Óðinn, accompanied by the caption “He is the god of death and war:))” (implied: he is the god of mostly that), they will likely not consider right away other important aspects of Óðinn as a deity, such as his association with wisdom, poetry, the afterlife and other, vastly more nuanced elements of his myth. Websites who present hyperviolent depictions of pretty much all Norse deities, even in the case of Frø or Njörðr, more often than not have some sort of ties with the far right or even sometimes with white supremacy. At the top of my head, I could even name at least two folkish pagan websites I stumbled upon simply because I was baffled by the images they put up online and sought to see who’d commission such pictures. These sorts of website also tend to reduce deities to a handful of personality traits and this can lead new pagans to view them as entirely two-dimensional. It’s a dead giveaway for sources to avoid, in my opinion. If you are a new pagan who seeks to better understand a deity’s areas of influence and general personality, I would advise you to double-check sources, to keep researching and researching until you’ve consciously made your own opinion of them. Don’t right away believe the very first source you stumble upon. This is all a personal thought I’m trying to express as clearly as possible, and if any of you guys have anything to add, don’t hesitate to share your own thoughts and experiences! I would be delighted to hear about them.

something really cool happened today that i wanted to share:

my nephew is 9 years old, and a stereotypical little boy. he likes dinosaurs, minecraft, and ninjas.

today i walked in on him excitedly watching Nimona with my dad. (minor spoiler warning!)

i had never heard of it, but i sat down and watched some of it, just to see why he was so happy.

he started narrating it, anticipating parts of it, almost as if he’d seen it before. he had.

we didn’t get to finish it, but i watched it on my own, because it looked fun and i wanted to see how it ended.

and i loved it. it was a fun, exciting, fantastical adventure about the importance of acceptance people who are different to us.

and it had a very clear queer subplot.

one that my nephew hadn’t mentioned at all in his explanation of the film. his summary was “it’s about a monster who helps a knight that was framed for killing the queen”.

and honestly yeah, that is what the film was about.

before sharing it with us, he had watched it all, engrossed himself in the story, took it in entirely, and the part he cared about most was whether Nimona got her acceptance. he wasn’t indoctrinated, or confused, or questioning anything about himself.

he didn’t bat an eyelid over a gay love confession. he just enjoyed the film, raved about it, made my 60 year old dad watch the movie about the monster who didn’t fit in.

he’s still the same little boy who’s been asking us how to get a girlfriend.

the only thing a movie centred around queer and queer-coded characters taught my nephew was that those who are different to him are not monsters. that’s it.

and that dragons are really cool.

Simon petrikov coping FAIL compilation

Ive seen multiple posts from reddit refuges that go like "im queer and its so welcoming here!" Or "im nonbinary and dont get quized on my gender here!" Or "im autistic and i can be weird here and yall like it!" And its so fuckin cute its like yes hi hello welcome this is the gay ass autistic website we love special interests we love weird genders we love just saying random shit and the just happy surprised tone of those posts is so wholesome to me like yes! hi! you are in fact the target audience! welcome home

i keep trying to phrase a post as like a helpful tip for people who like worldbuilding but. i have to be honest with myself. it is not a helpful tip because no one asked for it. i just want to rant about kinship terminologies.

I sometimes wonder if a lot of people on the left just don't let themselves be consciously aware that yes, the people who back authoritarianism, fascism, and generally n*zi bullcrap will be voting. On all levels, local to national. All the time.

Because like, people who aren't authoritarian in leaning will argue. Will point out that there's cons and be depressed sometimes easily that there is no perfect candidate.

But- the very point of being an authoritarian is that once they choose their authority, they do what they are told.

They are told to vote by one politician they decided is on their side to vote for another one and will do it without many, if any, questions.

They're told to vote (illegally if it's during a service) by their pastor, by their boss, by their parents, by their spouse, by someone in authority over them that they have accepted as the authority, and they'll go out and do it.

Some of them can snap out of it if it really goes too much against some spark inside, but the whole thing of their wanting a simplistic us vs them world view where they can just sit back and do what they're told and feel better, comfortable, or even superior for doing it means that they'll go do as they're told and then feel good and superior about doing it.

This is how they've long-gamed the GOP to where it is today, that's what is meant when people say "the Republicans just go out and vote". They do that! And they vote without putting any thought into it, without stressing much about imperfections.

Non authoritarians/non-fascists are more likely to give up, or argue against candidates, or just be contrarian, and thus might rather shoot themselves in the foot when it comes time to just doing what is a civic duty to try and prevent the rise of what the other side will always, always turn out in their full numbers to back.

Even if they live in an area where theoretically they would be outvoted 20 to 2, they will show up 'defiantly' and cast their votes for the person they have been told by someone they have decided to trust told them to vote for. Even if they don't know a damn thing about the candidate other than two talking points from a campaign ad or that were talked about at the church social.

This doesn't make any voting at all useless, it doesn't make anyone who votes sheep. It makes voting absolutely required by anyone opposing them. Not 'instead' of community action and protests and letters or whatever the fuck else, but along with.

It means as long as there are any elections, yes, to avoid fascists winning elections 'fairly' (not gonna get into gerrymandering here,) people have got to show up and vote against them, because the fascist voters aren't going to take a mental health day or write in a joke or go third party. Some person whose authority clicked a little circuit in their brain on, who maybe got them riled up about <one thing> told them to vote for <whoever> and they are going to vote for <whoever>, regardless of whatever <other things> are out there being ignored as less consequential.

I love all the dunking on James Somerton but I don’t think we’ve focused enough on all his lesbophobic rhetoric because the things he says are genuinely so astoundingly ahistorical and insensitive and it infuriates me that he was allowed to get away with it so long.

He literally said lesbians didn’t face police violence on the same scale as gay men when that’s just demonstrably untrue. Lesbians, ESPECIALLY butch, GNC, and trans lesbians, faced MASSIVE amounts of police violence AND STILL DO and if he gave a single shit about like. Women as people. Or even just LGBT history in general as he so proclaims to care about, he would know that. I’m going to start beating people to death with copies of Stone Butch Blues until they fucking listen

And I’d really love to know which fucking planet he lives on where lesbians apparently have all this great representation, and where we as lesbians are allowed to write our own stories, because I’m really not seeing that pretty much anywhere in mainstream media. I’m still seeing lesbians portrayed in stereotypical or fetishistic ways, and that’s when I see us portrayed at all. And yes cartoons are great and fine but there is so painfully little lesbian representation written by lesbians geared primarily towards adults.

But at this point, the wider community’s general lack of a reaction to lesbophobia in their ranks disappoints but doesn’t surprise me. It’s sad and somewhat astonishing that he’s escaped accountability for his lesbophobic comments up to this point, but again, not surprising. We need to stop letting our community, especially people like James Somerton who get held up as voices for the community, get away with lesbophobia.

If you ever wondered what the best living vertebrate is, it’s the alligator gar in my totally not biased 100% scientifically backed opinion. They are just a flawless creature. Nothing wrong with them. Good tooth to snoot ratio, they have a winning smile.

They and other monster fish absolutely should NOT be in the hands of most private keepers at all and I do NOT support morph breeding of them because of that, but pretty fishy cute :c

2.12 Chimney Begins - 2.09 Hen Begins - 2.16 Bobby Begins Again - 7.04 Buck, Bothered and Bewildered

Tommy's family arc

Disabled people shouldn't have to jump through hoops!!

For those who might be confused, "if a work of fiction makes you uncomfortable or upset, stop engaging with it and continue curating your viewing experience" still applies even if said work is made by someone you hate.

Aspec men deserve much more respect and recognition in the aspec community than they receive. They often face a different form of aphobia specific to them ("men are naturally sexual they can't be ace" "all men are unromantic that's not unique") this rhetoric is spouted by many, even members of our own community and I hope for a day where that is no longer the case. As an ace and demiro woman (demigirl but that's beside the point) I want to encourage folks to take the time to give the aspec men in their lives support and to the aspec men reading, you are who you say you are no matter what people say and you deserve the world. I'm sorry for the ways in which toxic masculinity has harmed you. You are a valued member of the aspec community and the queer community as a whole. No ace or aro person is broken and neither are you. I'm sorry if anyone has ever told you otherwise.

Episode 825 did you mean the episode where Luffy kissed Sanji ever so tenderly in the rain and told him he loved him

can anyone explain to me at what point rose tyler was "unbelievably stupid". was it when she was inventing transdimensional travel

tired of nonbinary people being pressured to be thin hairless elf like pretty and always depicted as white afab skinny kids with blue hair, of course only using they/them. give me nonbinary people who are heavily fem/masc aligned!! give me nonbinary people who use neopronouns and xenogenders!! give me fat nonbinary people!! hairy nonbinary people!! nonbinary POC!! amab nonbinary people!! disabled nonbinary people!! nonbinary people who wear crazy clothes, or nonbinary people who don’t stand out and don’t feel the need to!! nonbinary people with names like Moss or Socks, or nonbinary people with “regular” names like Susan or James or something!! Give me every flavor of nonbinary people, and stop trying to make it into yet ANOTHER gender binary!! Nonbinary can be anything, not just a third gender to adhere to!!

funnyjokespunperson