when Trump said he’d create jobs, i didn’t realize the plan was to escalate rhetoric and advocate violence against the media in order to create work for bomb squads, but hey, it’s working.
as of this writing, i think we’re up to eight confirmed bombs sent to people that are Democrats, or media that are insufficiently friendly to Trump, so far today (or possibly some were yesterday?).
just for reference: this is not normal.
suggest that, if you don’t think it should be normal, you consider the possibility that the rhetorical environment in which it seems normal is probably the problem, and that the thing where the Republican party as a whole cannot be seen to say anything negative about Trump openly claiming to be a nationalist and praising people for killing dissidents and censoring their media is probably the primary root of that problem right now.
options include (1) cause the Republican party to stop doing that, (2) cause them not to be in a position of power.
suggestion: vote.
While not meaning to normalize it, but didn’t the white house and some republicans just receive ricin letters last month? I find it a bit strange that that kind of just slid under the radar without this discussion of either side normalizing this behaviour before or whatever, but then presumably a mirror version happens and this discussion is now at the forefront. I mean, are we just going to apply anything negative we want about whatever group we want to blame and say that it normalizes ricin letters now? How about any religion? I just don’t see the correlation here being justified and just trying to equate one bad thing as being the fault of a thing you want to be thought of as bad by others.
Uh… This line of discourse is sort of complete bullshit.
What normalizes violence is actively advocating for it and cheering it on and treating it as normal.
And since before the 2016 election, we’ve had people talking about getting death threats from Trump supporters, and Trump talking about how he could just shoot someone and his supporters wouldn’t care (true enough), and violence at Trump rallies, and Trump praising the fucking dictator of North Korea, specifically his “relationship with his people”, and Trump supporting the Saudis and accepting their claim that probably the journalist was dismembered before he even got to their consulate.
That is normalizing violence as a response to political disagreement.
It has nothing to do with “religion”. It has nothing to do with any of the other negative things you might believe about Trump’s coterie. There are people out there who are racist assholes and think that putting little kids in detention camps is great, who still absolutely oppose the normalization of violence. And they are not at fault in the thing where it seems normal that we’ve had more attempted political assassinations in the US this year than we had during probably any previous decade of my life.
I don’t see how you can look at someone specifically praising violence and repression, and calling out “the media” as the Enemy of the American People, and then say “I don’t see how that’s correlated to package bombs being sent to the media”.
Also they didn’t receive ricin, exactly. ( @omegaspreem for information, no judgment intended, there was definitely some confusing news put out at first and not everyone probably got as much of the follow-up details as I did thanks to the incident qualifying as “local news” in my area). The guy sent ground castor beans, which… ricin is extracted from, yes, but he did not send extracted ricin. Castor beans are still poisonous… but pretty darn safe unless you EAT them. You’d have to be pretty stupid to just… eat the powdery stuff some rando mailed you without knowing what it is (granted, Trump might actually be that stupid, but in general this was really poorly planned if it was actually meant to hurt anyone). This was not a well-thought-out assassination or even intimidation attempt, this was some loser who either lacked the intention to do real harm, or the knowledge to be able to pull it off (or both). Considering that he also listed his actual home address for a return address on the letters… either he’s a total moron, he’s delusional, or he was after 15 minutes of fame (and maybe, just maybe, deliberately trying to make liberals look bad?). I heard, but haven’t been able to confirm, that he also claimed to have sent similar letters to the Queen and to Putin (this bit might just be local rumor, I’m mentioning it because I’ve heard it a few times, but no official news outlets seem to be confirming it so I would suggest taking that bit with a few grains of salt). Also, he has a past history of making threats including against Obama, and has done prison time for child abuse and assault.
Anyway, I’m guessing that the big reason that story died down real quick outside of Utah was that it… wasn’t actually ricin, just ground-up castor beans (which tested positive for ricin, since they do contain it, but aren’t nearly as dangerous as the extracted form). There wasn’t actually any real danger unless someone had decided to eat the contents of the letters, and even then they’d have a shot at surviving depending on how much they ate. But of course “Letters Sent To White House Test Positive For Ricin” is a much more attention-grabbing headline than “Actually Those Letters Just Contained Ground-Up Castor Beans And No One Was Hurt Or Even In Serious Danger”.
Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.
Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.
My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.
^^^ that part
This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.
Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.
This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.
Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.
I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.
And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.
You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.
So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)
Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.
They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.
Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.
The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.
If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.
^ So much good advice in this post right here
I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.
Don’t go near big trees in the night
If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night
I have broken all these rules.
I’ve seen some shit.
If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.
One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.
You think it’s the neighbor kids.
It’s not the neighbor kids.
Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.
So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.
If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.
Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.
Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.
Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.
Every time this post comes around, it’s my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldn’t have since I’m sleeping alone tonight, but you know, it’s fine. 😂
Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. I’ve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes.
Sure, visit during the day. That’s alright as long as you’re respectful. But you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering.
I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.
We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you).
But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.
I was walking to a friend’s house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. I’ve walked past it many times and wasn’t really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didn’t have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason that’s how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and that’s when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I don’t linger around poorly light cornfields at night.
Faeries and Wee Folk and Liminal Spaces, oh myyyy…
I just…yes. This. All of this. And then some.
You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to believe in it.
But if you know what’s good for you, DON’T FUCK WITH IT.
Seriously, y’all. If we continuously discover non-super/preternatural animals REGULARLY, y’all think there isn’t shit we just don’t know about it can succinctly label? And in somewhere like he US where you’ve got Indigenous as well as immigrant entities? Whew.
Reblogging for THE CORNFIELD DEMONS.
I live in Virginia myself, which is where you get a nice mix of southern and Appalachian and everything between. I know these stories, and sometimes, i still have to go out at night. I watch my neighbor’s dog a lot, and that hundred yard walk is terrifying every time. I’ve done it for years, still makes my skin crawl, i still feel the eyes in the back of my head.
My advice? Don’t use a flashlight. If you don’t know where you’re going, then you shouldn’t be walking. Don’t be silent either. Sing something, or better yet, growl. Snarl. Howl. Make whatever’s out there think that you’ll get it before it gets you. Breathe. And don’t look behind you when you get where you’re going. If the dog doesn’t want to go out, you let him stay in. He knows too.
Keep your eyes forward on the walk back. Don’t look behind you, don’t run. DONT RUN. Skip, jump, walk, but don’t run. Because whether it’s coyotes or Something Else, you’re fucking prey when you run, and it’s your fault if you disappear.
In Appalachia, you always keep the curtains shut and windows locked at night. The eyes of the forest are always watching at night. Always keep the cats in at night, cyoties or other things will eat them. If you have to let your dog out at night, keep the porch light on, and leave them out no longer than ten minutes. Sometimes the dogs will bark at seemingly nothing, but it’s something that we just can’t see. Animals are especially intuitive about the nature of the mountains, and are rightfully weary of the forest. Pay attention to what your dogs, cats, and livestock do and react to. They know what’s up. And for the love of god, don’t go into unfamiliar woods at night, and even if it is familiar woods, always be weary.
“Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.”
—
EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS.
Depression is not a synonym for being sad or having a bad day/bad week.
all of this and especially “So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.”
Since this post got longer than I expected, I broke it down thusly by some of the most common questions I receive from folks poking around in this particular corner of Irish (and Gaelic) polytheism:
I’m feeling drawn to the Morrígan. What do I do?
She scares me.
How do I know if she’s calling me?
I don’t think she’s calling me, but I’m still interested in having a relationship with her. Is that okay?
I don’t fit the mold of what a Morrígan worshiper always seems to look like.
What can I expect from a relationship with her?
Should I take an oath?
Do I get special treatment for all this work?
I want to be a priest for the Morrígan. How do I do that?
Where can I learn more about her?
Anything else to add?
Some thoughts on things I personally found useful in my own flailing spiritual exploration. Take them or leave them as you feel is relevant to your own flailing SPIRITUAL EXPLORATION.
It also doesn’t mean that you’re now obligated to walk a warrior’s path. Many choose to do so, and I’m glad we have folks who can do that kind of work. I can’t, and I don’t. Na Morrígna are all unique in their own ways while also sharing space with each other, and between them they cover a variety of subjects (e.g. fate, sorcery, justice, war and warriorship) and a variety of ways of approaching those subjects. You don’t have to be pigeonholed into a warrior’s path if that’s not right for you, and you don’t have to wear black combat boots while doing it.
I just want to point out that there are very many different definitions of “warriorship” and what it can look like. Not for nothing are some members of the Na Morrigna called by modern followers “the goddess of ptsd.” Sometimes warriorship means getting out of bed and living another day. It’s not all shields and rattling spears. And, no, you don’t need to wear black combat boots to do it.
Good point re: warriorship being different things to different people. “The goddess of PTSD” is a new one to me and I honestly can’t really argue, ha.
This past weekend, Morpheus Ravenna of the Coru facilitated a class specifically on Badb and discussed some of the many creatures described as accompanying Badb in her host of battlefield horrors and spirits. One such class of beings includes those who, in some interpretations, had gone mad from battle – which, in my mind, is a possible (without any way to prove it) reference to combat PTSD. Consider the tale of Mad Sweeney, for example
I hear Erynn Rowan Laurie, who is themselves a military veteran, has been doing some work with folks on the potential PTSD-oriented lore here, although I don’t know any details.
From experience, I pray to the Dagda to deal with combat related PTSD. As the father of Brigid, consort of Morrigan, and a deity associated with strength I feel that he is the focal point for that. Again this is just me though. Those that facilitate battle are not necessarily the best ones to repair the damage that results from it.
While I feel you have a good point there, not all of the Morrigna are battle-related. Besides which, Self Sovereignty is it’s own kind of strength, and acknowledging that you possess it can often lead you back from an abuse situation.
Something that’s almost never covered in fantasy mediums is common names.
Like we all know fantasy names are unusual, but any name to a foreign culture is considered unusual English names to Indian people are very unusual for example. But naturally, given that it’s an entire culture, there will be some common names, it’d be refreshing to at one point here this exchange.
“So I was talking to Vicnae and-”
“Wait which Vicnae? You can’t just say Vicnae. There are ten Vicnae’s in my village alone.”
This has 100 notes yesterday and 300 this morning what the fuck happened.
People understand the truly important things.
DSA (a German fantasy P&P RPG) actually has the name Alrik, which is hugely popular in the universe. Everyone is Alrik.
This is also a great excuse to use “X the Y” or “X of Y” type names without being pretentious. Calling someone “Thognor The Stout” goes from pomposity to practicality if he lives down the road from Thognor The Small.
It’s like that old joke about a KGB man trying to make contact with his agent in Wales: he knows the agent is called Evans, but so far he’s only found Evans the Milk, Evans the Post and Evans the Bread. Finally the pub landlord tells him to knock on the door of No. 27 and ask for Evans the Spy…
The “X the Y” works with modern names: John (the) Thatcher, Hugh (the) Smith; William (the) Carpenter etc. Other trades-as-names are Archer, Fletcher, Hedges, Fisher, Plowman, Farmer, Taylor and so on; the list is enormous.
French Kings called Louis (there were XVIII of them) tended to pick up descriptions rather than trades – Louis the Pious, the Stammerer, the Fat, the Prudent (also The Spider…) and so on, so there’s plenty of precedent for calling characters …the Fair, the Truculent, the Rich, the Well-Beloved etc.
Different translations can show what people think of a character: there were two medieval Dukes of Burgundy known as “…the Bold”, but while one was Phillipe le Hardi (daring, tough, hardy) the other was Charles le Téméraire
(rash, reckless, foolhardy).
Tweaking previous names is another method: compare Edward “the Confessor”, from his dubious reputation as an early 10th century god-botherer, and Edward VII “the Caresser”, from his definite reputation as an early 20th century skirt-chaser.
With “X of Y”, Y usually means somewhere big where all the Xs need told apart: John of Gaunt (Ghent), Hugh of Lincoln or Richard of York. Villages and hamlets were small enough that everyone knew who people were, so you’d seldom find
Henry of Barton-in-the-Beans,
or Matthew of Bagthorpe-with-Barmer, or Edward of Little Hautbois – they pronounce it “Hobbis”, but it’s also the name of an early oboe and that’s pronounced “Hoboy”. Whatever. Those are all real places, BTW. English hamlet names are amazing.
“X son of Y” might be used (also the Nordic X Ysson or simply X Y‘s son – See “Wolves Beyond The Border” by Robert E. Howard) while father and son with the same name might be tagged “the Younger” and “the Elder”. School pupils at a certain class of school used to be Watson Senior or Junior, or Watson Major, Watson Minor and Watson Minimus, or Molesworth One and Molesworth Two. There’s also the US custom of e.g. John Henry Doe III for when the same name(s) keep popping up in a family.
TVTropes (of course) has an entry called “One Steve Limit”, about how fiction avoids having two characters with the same or even similar names, and like the Welsh joke it makes sense in context. Read the “Real Life” section and boggle. It mentions, among many other examples, the Wars of the Roses when England was overrun by Richards and Edwards, Elizabeths and Henrys, as if there was some sort of penalty for choosing a different name. Since George of Clarence and Edmund of Rutland both died by violence, you have to wonder. (Though various Richards, Edwards and Henrys went out the same way, so maybe not.)
In my own family there was an “eldest son” name on both sides for as far back as I can go, almost two centuries – Robert on Dad’s side, Peter on Mum’s –
differenced with a second name from one or another uncle. There seemed to be no obligation to use the “difference” name – my Dad did, I didn’t – so for a time in the early 1960s there were often three Peters in my Gran’s house simultaneously.
Since one was late 80s, one was mid-60s and one was about 7, there wasn’t much confusion – unless someone didn’t look before they shouted “Peter, are you there…?”
Big Jock, Medium Jock, Wee Jock, No-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock Jock…
another thing to have fun with: how nicknames can change context across language lines. my fantasy protagonist kastor is occasionally referred to, wherever mercenaries and for-hire bodyguards gossip, as ‘the wolf’ or ‘the hound’, and it sounds very badass. but his actual nickname back home was chehe, which translates to ‘the stray’ or ‘the mutt’.
Aries – an Aries fears a relationship that grows stale and gets boring. They want to have someone to do everything with, to laugh with and adventure with. They fear the most that every night will blend together and that the fun will all fade.
Taurus – a Taurus fears a lack of acceptance. They fear that you will try to change them or that you may try to force ideas or your own opinions on them. They want to be embraced for who and what they are.
Gemini – a Gemini fears no effort. They naturally put everything they have into the people they love, hoping to get the same in return. They fear their efforts not being acknowledged or being given back to them. They know what they’re worth; they refuse to settle for less than that.
Cancer – a Cancer will fear rejection. Someone who is wishy-washy and doesn’t give their full attention or doesn’t commit to them sends a Cancer into panic mode. They need someone who is sure about them and what they want.
Leo – a Leo fears abandonment. They fear abandonment so much that sometimes they create problems just so they can leave and have control over the situation. They have a fear of the unknown. Any sign of you changing your mind about them puts them on the defense.
Virgo – a Virgo fears letting you in. They take a long time to open up because they don’t want anyone to use their own mind and heart against them.
Libra – a Libra fears trusting. It takes a lot for a Libra to be vulnerable, to be willing to give you control of their emotions or their heart. They will be hesitant in letting you be part of their routine.
Scorpio – a Scorpio fears no passion. Not just with sex, with everything. They need to feel everything deeply and intensely and have an undeniable connection with you. A passionless relationship is what they fear the absolute most.
Sagittarius – a Sagittarius fears not being able to be themselves. They don’t want to be stuck in something where they need to act like they’re perfect all the time or that they don’t have their own issues. They need to be able to let go with you, since they hold back so much around other people.
Capricorn – a Capricorn fears no commitment. They don’t want to be in a relationship that has no real happy ending. They want someone who is sure that they want them. Someone who has a future in mind.
Aquarius – an Aquarius fears someone being unreliable. They need stability and someone who will always follow through with their word and promises. They fear being let down or disappointed. It takes a lot for them to count on someone.
Pisces – a Pisces fears being misunderstood. They need someone who will dive into their mind and understand them without words. Someone who knows how to make them feel better and who gets it all without even trying.
I too had an edgelord phase – mostly in my late teens, as a reaction to being infantilized and diffusely gaslighted about who and what I was; I used over-the-top offensive jokes of various kinds to weed out people who were going to treat me as their concept of what a young girl should be like.
Eventually it became the case that I had other ways to get people to make space for me to exist, and eventually I came to understand that these kinds of jokes weeded out more people than the patronizing ones, and so I stopped.
There are many complex reasons why “problematic” humor is traditionally exercised by people who have been made outcasts and misfits. When people decide not to care what the reasons are, they often also go straight to victim-blaming.
(And I’m not talking about James Gunn at this point, to be clear, I’m talking about your message and the troubling general pattern – the disturbing number of times I’ve seen antis tell people that they must have deserved to be abused or bullied, because they’re so weird – as if even someone who was neurotypical to begin with could construct normality from nothing!)
Every day I miss the brief intersectional era of Tumblr before the agents provocateur co-opted this site – even with a codebase that damaged the ability to hold conversations, people actually seemed to care about social justice and really wanted to listen to each other’s lived realities. That was a social norm at one point, and it led to some really important conversations and movements finding a footing here. I want to see that coming back.
Oh lord yes. When did I talk the most about rape, whether serious comments or the kind of jokes decent people don’t make? Right after I was traumatized and searching for some way to express the way I felt violated. (My stuff was medical, not sexual, so there wasn’t really a readily accessible word for it.)
Yeah, I eventually stopped, but when I first heard “never joke about rape” the message I got wasn’t “here’s a tip to be more considerate to others,” it was “what happened to you was literally unspeakable. Don’t tell us about it, and if somehow you’re compelled to do so, you have to present the facts rather than hint at them, regardless of whether you feel ready to do that.”
“Don’t EVER joke about THAT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OH MY GOD” was probably the first SJ-bit I doubted, and it’s not because I like being mean. At all.
Gallows Humor is a lot different when you’re the person on the platform, figuring out if someone’s gonna drop you through the hole or cut the rope and let you down “safely.”
Here we are once again, with NSFW creators being censored into oblivion.
Apparently, Ko-Fi has deemed it illegal/prohibited to POST or even LINK to NSFW content on your Ko-Fi profile page, meaning my account has been “unpublished”. This means my page is disabled to everyone except myself unless I make changes to comply with their policies.
I’ve
removed all of my gallery links (DA, Tumblr, Patreon) and just sent a
message to their support team asking to have my account re-instated,
I’ll give updates when I receive them.
In the
meantime, if you’re an NSFW creator and have ANY NSFW content posted or
linked on your Ko-Fi page, well, it looks like you better start deleting
it. Check out their policy page below:
Good info, though I would add the minor correction that Ko-Fi doesn’t consider NSFW content “illegal,” it’s instead complying with the demands of its payment providers (PayPal and Stripe) and those providers’ terms of service. If you have NSFW content on your page, there is an option (as listed in the link above) to flag your work as NSFW so that it isn’t flagged as Limited or removed, but it seems you still cannot post any sexually explicit/pornographic work (or links to it) to Ko-Fi.
Wait a sec. Patreon uses Paypal too, and they don’t seem to have any issue with NSFW content, somehow?
They’re shooting themselves in the foot, as far as I can see. With these rules, they lose any chance they might have had to compete with Patreon.
Patreon absolutely takes issue with adult content creators. They went on a massive purge recently, even after they supposedly stood up to paypal when paypal told them they couldn’t host any adult content. (Looks like paypal won in the end.)
They tend to only go after visual art content creators, but I had a polite warning about my books too.
Is there a way to turn off payments from a specific source? Like if I was an artist who had a Patreon, could I refuse to accept PayPal as payment method?
Their only alternative is Stripe, and Stripe has nearly verbatim the same policies as paypal with regards to this kind of content.
Although patreon as of yet, doesn’t inhibit linking to places.
I think ko-fi must have got smacked real hard by the surge in people moving from patreon to ko-fi to avoid the purges, cause this was not in their terms and conditions when I originally signed up. Or at least, was not as spelled out quite so explicitly. It was vague policy babble.
The fact that they are like “don’t even list to literature” makes me think they might also be cutting some flack for people linking to their Ao3, where you are explicitly not allowed to link to any sort of payment site because that is how they get around copyright infringements.
Ko-fi is merely having to reinforce the terms and conditions laid out by PayPal and Stripe as the middleman. It’s unfortunate, but those are the two main payment methods people use. And I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do at this point if this puritanical stint continues.
So uh….. remember how SWs were talking about FOSTA/SESTA, and how it would impact other parts of the internet….?
Remember how we’ve been telling you shit about oppressive companies like PayPal and how hard it is to get paid reliably…??
House Of Crows 