A-strange-looking-raven - I Am Behind On Everything

hmm

Finding good art on twitter

when people are like “he’s not even attractive you could find a guy that looks like him at any gas station” i’m like….. well you see there’s beauty everywhere actually

I am not a mcspirker but that doesn't mean I don't care about Bones or think he's close to them. He's family.

You can play a lot with the dynamics. The one I like best is where Jim and Bones are best friends, then Jim starts getting close to Spock and Bones feels jealous because he fears he's losing his best friend spot. So they hang out together with this obvious competitive air, putting each other down for the benefit of Jim, trying to prove to Jim that they are the best friend and the other isn't.

And then Bones gets it. Spock isn't after his spot. He wants to be something very different to Jim; he wants a romantic relationship. At which point Bones gradually quits with the competitive shit and wingmans each of them to the other. Complaining all the while that they're giving him gray hair with their slow burn nonsense. He's the first to congratulate them when they finally get together.

By the movie era he is genuinely like a brother to both of them, confident in his place in the family.

This is all yet another manifestation of my "romantic love isn't by definition closer than platonic" hobby horse. Kirk and Spock don't love Bones less. They love him differently.

*takes drag* but that's just, like, my opinion, man. Those of you who do ship all three together, I get where you're coming from.

Hot take: I unironically think Solarpunk should do more stuff with googie/general-50s-style aesthetics as an act of political praxis.

Cause like, specifically because of how different it is from the Default Solarpunk Aesthetic that slowly seems to be becoming A Thing.

Because there’s always a worry that solarpunk becomes appropriated as just an aesthetic divorced from the political praxis and practical design aspects that are the whole point of it.

And like, while it’d always have the inherent boundary of form-follows-function, I think the best way to head that off is to diversify solarpunk into many other aesthetics, if that makes sense?

The thief that only borrows in a sea with out the shark, But who protects the shadow from the dark?

Of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept 11 attacks:

15 were from Saudi Arabia (a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

2 were from the United Arab Emirates (also a powerful/oil-rich country the U.S. works hard to maintain diplomatic relations with)

1 was from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon.

None of the hijackers were from Iraq.

None of the Sept 11 hijackers were Iraqi.

None of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq.

Hey, let's talk about anons like this, because I know some people haven't been in a position to see the patterns these play out in on broader scale and may indeed not spot the trap.

And it is a trap.

An ask like this has several purposes.

First, it uses social justice language in passive aggressive and manipulative ways to try to coerce a behavior. In this case, the desired behavior is usually for the recipent to participate in community shunning and/or harrassment. The language above is intended to put the recipient on the defensive where, in the haste to disassociate themself from the Bad Thing, they quickly disassociate themself from the bad person, often with no particular fact checking or evidence.

The message is also intended to create a sense of being surveilled and judged by an unknown amount of people with unknown amount of social power and an unknown amount of relevance to your life.

Notice that these asks are usually framed as if they are coming from a follower or potential follower, someone who is addressing you personally and who cares about your opinion and who your blog has an effect on. However this is usually.... very much not the case. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a gossip campaign from like this from the outside, you will very quickly notice that messages like this get sent in mass batches to dozens and dozens of strangers. (You can often turn these up with a tumblr search, if you look.)

The sender does not know you and probably does not follow you. They have a person they don't like (possibly for their stated reason and possibly not), and they are going through the reblogs of a post from that blog and mass messaging *everyone* with a form letter. They will not see your response and they will probably never even see your blog again.

Which brings us to the second goal of whisper campaigns like this:

Notice that I blacked out the names above? That's because when the recipient answers anonymous asks like this, they provide a platform for the opinion on their blog. An anonymous message like this that gets posted doesn't just spread gossip and apply pressure to the recipient, it is spread to the recipient's entire community.

The *goal* is to get access to your community. The *goal* is to use you as a soapbox.

Is the information accurate? Did anyone check? Does the anon have an ulterior social motive? BIG SHRUG

If you go into the comments on one of these whisper campaigns you will see that *most people never bother to check.*

They assume good faith from a follower, they're off balance defending themselves, and they jump straight to conciliation.

It's a really, really effective form of social manipulation, and really really commonly misused.

tumblr tuesday: art! art! art!

Hello, Tumblr. Let’s give all of these new and returned art folks a warm welcome, shall we? Hello, new and returned Tumblr artists! We salute you! To everyone else: Here’s a whole heap of good art that has come home.

@martapreliy​:

@reivennamoon​:

@judilyart​:

@pansylair​:

@fiona-stabler​:

@claieart​:

@millefobi​:

@qudbo​:

@kiruaoiarts​:

@zifey​:

@jukeincorporated​:

@hellocloudyart​:

spirk using telepathy to keep each other alive. kirk, desperate, psy-null and untrained, reaching clumsily into spock's dying mind and pulling, dragging spock's essence into himself, wrenching him forceably from the very jaws of death and holding him there through sheer strength of will, saying you can't die, i won't let you, you can't leave me, i need you, and binding him to life and to himself until it's impossible to fully separate them. spock, more skilled, carefully managing each one of kirk's vital signs - keeping his heart beating steady, his lungs drawing breath, his temperature within a safe range, all while suppressing kirk's pain, and at the same trying, vainly, to keep their minds from tying themselves inexorably together, but they're pressed too close and he can't, and he hopes that kirk will forgive him, for bonding them like this (he will, of course he will), but the alternative, letting kirk die, was - unthinkable.