Mad this. It literally says he got jailed for ignoring a court order telling him to stay away from the school - yet the headline says it's for not calling a kid they. He broke the court order cos he was being a self righteous stalkery Christian weirdo. I know the sort, they did the same to us at school cos we were scruffy poor unfortunates / desperate people that apparently needed god to save us. Loads of Christians are like this, proper weirdos.
Keep your messaging simple:
“Trump fired everyone in charge of airplane safety, and a week later planes started crashing into each other.”
That’s it. That’s the messaging. Don’t get bogged down disputing Trump’s false claims. Just blame him, in short and repeatable sentences.
So are we gonna make October the Wei Wuxian Appreciation month, or what.
I really love the idea of Baba Yaga: an old witch who lives in a house with chicken legs. Are there any Baba Yaga stories you know of where Baba Yaga isn't evil? If not, what are your ideas on a friendly Baba Yaga
Oh I agree, Baba Yaga is a great character! She features in broader Slavic folklore, but I know her mostly from Russian fairy tales. There she mainly shows up in three forms: helpful Baba Yaga, cannibal Baba Yaga and… let’s call her maybe-murderous Baba Yaga:
The helpful type gives heroes good advice and useful gifts. (E.g. The Three Kingdoms, The Maiden Tsar, King Bear, The Sea King and Vasila the Wise, Go I Know Not Wither, Bring Back I Know Not What, Ilya Muromets and the Dragon.)
The cannibal type wants to trap people to cook in her stove and eat. (E.g. “Baba Yaga”, Baba Yaga and the Brave Youth, The Prince Danila Govorila.)
The maybe-murderous type is only helpful when the hero performs the right kind of behaviour. (E.g. “Baba Yaga”, Maria Morevna, Vasilisa the Beautiful, and Ilya Muromets and the Dragon, again.)
In some stories there is more than one Baba Yaga, in which case they are sisters.
She is sometimes called “Baba Yaga the Bone-Legged”, in whatever form she takes. The dangerous Baba Yaga’s often fly around in a mortar, wielding the pestle as a magic rudder. The cannibal and maybe-murderous types often have a fence around their house made from human bones or decorated with skulls.
The iconic little hut on chicken feet is usually the first thing a hero ever sees of Baba Yaga and multiple stories state you must greet the house thus: “Little hut, little hut, turn your back to the forest and your front to me.” That way you can go in.
I will make a separate post to tell you some more about specific stories where Baba Yaga is friendly!
Sometimes I just kinda wanna cry because in the MCU, Steven Grant Rogers:
Was violently bullied throughout his childhood and into adulthood.
Watched his mother waste away and die.
Was an orphan by his mid-to-late teens.
Grew up in poverty, during the Great Depression, as the child of immigrants .
Grew up color-blind, partially-deaf, malnourished/stunted, and chronically-ill, in a culture that was so big on eugenics that Nazis took their cues from the US systems.
Signed up for the army and then dove on what he believed to be a live grenade because he believed the best use of his life was to exchange it for the lives of others.
Fought on the front lines of the bloodiest and most horrific war in human history, where he undoubtedly witnessed terrible violence and atrocities.
Watched his best friend die and lived with the guilt of believing he was responsible.
Crashed a plane into the ocean, fully believing he was going to die.
Was frozen alive.
Woke up to find that nearly everyone he’d ever known was dead and gone, and his home was changed nearly beyond recognition; he could never truly go home from the war. Ever.
Lost his shot at happiness with the one woman who ever actually looked at him when he was small and frail, and had to watch her mind come apart, and later carry her coffin.
Found out his sacrifice – the thing he gave up his life, his friends, his whole world for – was in vain, and that HYDRA had corrupted the legacy of the people he loved.
Found out his best friend survived, and that he’d abandoned him to a fate worse than death, and got to then live with THAT fresh guilt.
Is seen by most people as Captain America; almost no one sees Steve Rogers.
Was only 26 years old, biologically, during the Battle of New York.
Has not had the time or resources to cope with any of this.
Is how the Marauder's map is treated really surprising from the series that minimizes trauma, glorifies bullying, portrays abused children as inherently evil and sees nothing wrong with the implications of a society where love potions are so routine that people sell them by the store full to literal children and tell "back in my day" stories about them like sexual assault is a fucking joke?
No, it doesn't surprise me at all that the invasiveness of the map is never addressed.
It's very telling that even though her general excuse for all marauder antics is that they were just mischievous kids, but then she has characters who were adults then do nothing and then she has characters who are now adults--adults she wants us to Believe are reasonable and fair--who know what they did and still defend it and treat it like it's perfectly harmless and a "just good fun."
It infuriates me that people always seem to consider the Marauder's Map as something "cool" and boyish. To me, it is the ultimate tool to bully and abuse - a violation of all privacy and safety, the ultimate object of control for the abusers. I cannot see many things that would be more dangerous than this inside a boarding school, and I cannot even begin to imagine how Snape and other students must have suffered from it, unable to hide from those who could attempt murder or sexually assault them without being expelled. I don't care if this takes place in a magical world - everyone has a right not to be restlessly tracked. The fact the matter is never addressed within the books, and the Marauders seem to have received no real punishment (in a normal and proper school, this would get students expelled) when this clearly is psychological harassment and stalking, is another example of how unsafe Hogwarts is for all students that do not have the privilege to belong to Gryffindor, or come from a wealthy background, thus being at the mercy of bullies like the Marauders. And the fact the narrative doesn't point out this fact is highly disturbing - on the contrary, the map is always talked about in a positive way:
"This little beauty's taught us more than all the teachers in this school."
It is still an object of pride for Lupin, who gives it to Harry at the end of his third year. We know for a fact he never understood, or wanted to understand, the seriousness of his actions - the fact is this time, his views on the map aren't contradicted by anything in the narrative (in the contrary to the bullying of Snape, seen for what it was by Harry).
"While on the run in looking for Horcruxes, Harry would often look at the map to see what Ginny Weasley, his love interest, was doing, which would hint that the map works from any location."
We know that Harry and Ginny's relationship is a positive one with shared love in a particular context; but still such activity should never be romantized. None of the partner should have the power to stalk their loved one: it gives a disturbing idea of "entitlement" to the other.
"Eventually, James Sirius Potter probably stole the map from his father's desk."
Finally, the map is again presented as an object of enjoyment which provides mere fun - according to JK the map certainly made its way back to Hogwarts, in the hands of a James Sirius nonetheless (I mean, this is a symbol as a whole). I think that shows how she never understood the seriousness of what this object implies - because the use of the map is clearly, and definitely, written and talked about as positive and even funny.
Thus it is also talked about as something entirely positive within the fandom, just as bullying and trauma are minimized by many people - and to accept the idea that stalking is okay, another tool for "pranks", is worrying. The map is, on the contrary, a symbol of what the Marauders had and looked for during their school years: absolute power.
🖤💜 Happy international asexuality day! 🖤💜🐀
Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity 🖤💜
Let's make one thing clear: TERFs at large do not care about women's rights.
That is why they will complain about trans women in sport, but not about how underfunded women's sports are, how women at times are forced to play in revealing outfits for the benefit of investors, or on fake grass, making injuries more likely. It is why they complain about trans women in sport, but not cis male and at times cis female trainers accussed or even charged with sexual assault trainging female teams.
They do not care about women's rights. That is why they explicitly ask cis men who want to commit violence against women in women's brathrooms - to scare off trans women, who never really assaulted anyone. It is, why they will support rapist and domestic abusers, bullying their victims of social media, while also complaining about the supposed inherent danger of trans women.
They do not care about women's rights. That is why they stay silent on fascist regimes trying to persecute women who abort or loose pregnancies, or even on those regimes trying to just receive safe healthcare.
They do not care about women's rights. That is why they do not push for better diagnostic criteria and medication for women - specifically also neurodivergent women, while they fearmonger about what they suppose are "girls forced to be boys".
TERFs do not care about the rights or safety of women. That is why they would rather hunt down a minority, who is far more likely to be victim of all forms of violence rather than the perpetrator, than stand up to those cis men who have assaulted, violated, and at times killed many, many women, and try to make this violence against women legal.
There is a reason why TERFs cheer for men like Trump, and Musk, and those like them. And that is, that they never cared about women's rights to begin with.