Do Me A Solid And Just Reblog This Saying What Time It Is Where You Are And What You’re Thinking About

Posting this here because it’s one of my faves and because there’s nothing you can do to stop me!

Sewer Journals

What this fic has:

Jaheira being nosy as hell

Smut (because it’s me and apparently I can’t just write a regular fic - it’s not reeeally dirty like usual tho!!)

Ultra-soft Nine-Fingers Keene (deal with it)

What this fic does not have:

Uhm. Idk. Jaheira showing restraint like she ought to since she’s the High Harper and old as hell

Summary:

“Jaheira let out an amused breath. Sewer journals. It would appear the Underduke kept detailed diaries. Coded details of all past, present, and possibly future Guild business? A clear advantage; knowledge she absolutely must learn. She picked an older red one and opened it to a random page. She had long ago learned the code in which Nine-Fingers wrote her Guild communications, but the code in these pages seemed slightly different. Certain symbols and letters replaced ones that Jaheira knew well. But she was a quick study, always had been.”

I’m just trying to listen to the Magic Flute. But I have a window in my office. It has been raining all day. The rain has stopped. Now everyone wants to look through said window. Please leave?

go away forever with me

Not a gaming post; I just love H. neanderthalensis more than anything. I’d like to think there was a functional purpose for their occipital bun such as supporting their thick shoulder and neck muscles for spear and atlatl throwing. But what do I know?

The thing is that the portrayal of Neanderthals as having been inherently grotesque and alien to H. sapiens is something we will never have proof of. But we do have proof that, in different locations and in different populations across time, we all found eachother desirable. We saw eachother and wanted to touch. And the offspring were held by their mothers and raised and had their own offspring in turn.

When you look for the first proof that H. sapiens found Neanderthals repulsive, you have to wait until the Victorian era, when the white masters of empires were busy portraying Neanderthals as stupid, brutish, and (of course) dark-skinned.

In more modern times, we’ve had people arguing that instead of seeing Neanderthals as Benighted Savages, they should instead be seen as Noble Savages, (allegedly) cruelly destroyed and driven from their lands by H. sapiens. Which one of their two you believe says more about your modern political views than it does about ancient H. sapiens.

And, whether we construct Neanderthals as Savage or Noble Savage, the fundamental assumption we project into the unfathomably distant past is still that H. sapiens saw Neanderthals as an Other, with the language we use being almost explicitly that of modern racial dynamics.

But we have no proof of any of that. We have no proof of hostilities. We know we co-existed and we had sex. That’s it.

Humans obviously have sex with some humans and kill others. We also know that, when small groups of humans occupy vast spaces with infrequent contact with others, unique cultures will always form, some more hospitable, some more neophobic/xenophobic. But many cultures of small settlements placed among huge unpeopled landscapes place supreme emphasis on hospitality to strangers. Plus, we fucking love other social animals, as evidenced by how we befriended wolves.

I’m a humourless weirdo and a wet blanket about popular constructions of Neanderthals as “monstrous”, and I freely admit it. But that’s because it’s tied up in legacies of imperialism. Not only that, but it also privileges one culture (yours, mine, modernity’s) as being most human by implicitly assuming we can project it onto people in the past. Since you don’t pretend that all global cultures share exact same values as you do, it doesn’t take more than a few moments’ reflection to realise you can’t do that to the past.

FUCK. honestly just FUCK. We missed a very important day yesterday.

Fun fact - it got hotter:

Help me. I went outside and parts of me melted.

Ever since i was a little girl i knew i never wanted to be pregnant

Have another one!

Martha Gellhorn, from a letter to David Gurewitsch featured in The Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn

The wife and I went to a hockey game last night. I present to you my unsolicited BG3 hockey thoughts:

Gale - would be the announcer (and we all know why)

Lae’zel - she wouldn’t understand the game, but she would love the fighting (she’d probably shank someone with a broken hockey stick)

Karlach - she would understand the game and the fighting would be a toss up; she wouldn’t start a fight, but she’d defend her teammates; I’d probably make her a goalie (after her heart gets fixed so she can’t melt the ice, obvs)

Halsin - would understand the game, but is too gentle for fighting; he might be backup goalie

Minsc - does not understand the game, would love the fighting, really just wants a hotdog

Astarion - couldn’t care less, just wants good wine, would be too afraid to break a nail (I will not be apologizing for that statement)

Minthara - would understand the game, would love the fighting, would try to poison the other team

Shadowheart - would sort of understand the game, but would miss every single goal

Wyll - understands the game, but would just want to skate because it’s like dancing (also not apologizing)

Oathbreaker Paladin - would understand the game and would be amazing at it, would probably fight especially if it meant someone was breaking an oath

Dame Aylin - was there when the game was invented and played in the first ever league, she single-handedly started hockey fights

Nine-Fingers Keene - would understand the game, would probably fix the game where she would come out on top regardless of the winner, would also enjoy fighting and would shank someone with a broken hockey stick (no probables there)

Rion - she’s got some anger issues and I think would understand the game and would also love to kick some ass

Zevlor - would understand the game, would love the fighting, would probably be quite good

Orin - would understand the game, would love the fighting and would also shank someone with a broken hockey stick (although she might stab her own teammates, which is problematic)

Jaheira - would be the team mom and alternate between cheering on the fighting and being upset about the fighting

Ketheric Thorm - would be the team dad and would love the fighting

Isobel Thorm - just there to watch Aylin, but knows everything about the game because of Aylin

Gortash - too busy trying to become the hockey commissioner to care about the game or the players

Volo - thinks he’s the announcer, but really there to entertain children with his nonsense

Withers - referee

Scratch and the Owlbear - mascots

(Obligatory fight pic from last night’s game)