Friends To Enemies To Lovers Is Actually Something That Can Be So Intimate. I Know You I Know Everything

YOU KNOW WHAT BOTHERS ME

when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”

“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME

they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.

and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS

come to think of it i’ve never read a fantasy novel that talks about textile production at all??? like it’s even worse than the “where are all the farms” problem like where are people getting the cloth if no one’s doing the spinning and weaving??? kmart???

good christ someone give this bitch a hug

Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.

astonishing how good it can feel to get some chores done sometimes. you’ll be sitting there like damn i am some type of horrid little smeagol like creature who should be crushed to death. but then you do some laundry and you’re like wrow. im actually gods most fuckable soldier.

Aww this is so funny lol ♡

A storm rolls over Late Cretaceous Hateg island, nourishing the land and drenching the local wildlife. Featuring: Tethyshadros, Hatzegopteryx, Paludititan, Balaur bondoc, an Enantiornithine, Sabresuchus, and many other critters.

chapter 20 of htn is short but has so much weight to it. the entirety of the chapter is this: the whole family watches and cleans up and does nothing else while harrow gets violated over and over again by her eldest brother, at the behest of her father.

the chapter begins with gideon penetrating harrow's pelvis, then god makes her whole again, yet claims powerlessness.

he calls her to his rooms and insists she consume things she does not like and does not want, and she does it, because she has nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, and no other form of protection.

the chapter ends with harrow seeking physical solace from the body: a woman, her silent caretaker, john's original victim,

and then it is revealed to us that the poem john recites to harrow is the poe verse at heart of humbert humbert's (of nabakov's lolita) backstory.

i really love the way tamsyn muir navigates incest and sexual violence here. it is inarguable that harrow the ninth is a family drama; john is a patriarch in every sense of the word: a divine patriarch, a scholarly father-figure, and a literal father; harrow's narration posits him as fatherly, ianthe's dialogue refers to him as such, the other lyctors half-jokingly call him daddy; the lyctors dutifully call each other brother and sister. they are god's children, in that he made them, literally or hegemonically, and as both lyctors and theocratic royalty, they interpret god's will. they have a religious compulsion to follow john's orders and to not question him. the lyctor's familial titles call to christian ecclesiastical titles of sister, brother, and father. john uses his self-appointed divine right and the historical hierarchy of the catholic church to perpetuate systematic violence and allegorical rape against harrowhark. john lived out a jesus narrative, coopted historical european aesthetics, political structures, and religion, recreated the catholic church with necromancy as religious praxis, and is now cycling through the historic legacy of that very system—and in this chapter, and harrow the ninth as a whole, the macro becomes the micro. this family dynamic is just a minute example of what is happening empire-wide.

on a non-religious note: i recently read the incest diary by anonymous, and this chapter reminded me of a few sections of that book where the author details moments where she brings up her incestuous abuse from her father to her family: her mother ignores her, just as she has ignored this fact for the author's entire life; her brother refuses to believe her and threatens to kill himself; her close family friend instructs her to never bring it up again, claiming that it happens to all women and that the author should get over it. mercymorn's callous caretaking of harrow in the previous chapter after gideon's first attack on her reminds me of this, as well as ianthe's mean-spirited snickering. the women in harrow's life reluctantly take care of her in the aftermath (if the family friend is to be believed, this happens to all women; it is entirely believable to me that both mercy and ianthe have been victims of sexual violence as well), and john heals her only to then put her in situations where she cannot say no to him. throughout the book, he steadily defiles her boundaries and backs her into emotional corners where she must confess to him, all the while using the threat of constant violence to keep her weak and scared. the physical is just a small part of the incestuous abuse happening in htn—so much of it is psychological, and it's psychological coming from the entire family. harrow's brother and sisters keep her from completely perishing under the weight of these attacks, but only just. and in doing this, they only enable john's abuse.

not to be insane but in a realistic tomarry/harrymort fic with good characterization it’s very difficult for them to not change one another.

a good fic acknowledges that harry only survives their canon interactions (and overall, his many different in-story challenges) from being tricky and clever. like it or not, harry is much weaker in magic, strength, mind, and political influence than voldemort.

so when he’s getting out of the third task, he doesn’t win, he cheats. when he’s getting out of malfoy manor, he doesn’t win, he calls dobby and gets out though a minor oversight. he doesn’t defeat umbridge in a dual, he instead helps run a covert defense club and repeatedly goes under her nose to do what he wants!! he doesn’t save sirius in book 3 because he fought peter and won, he used a time turner (albeit with help), broke ministry rules without anyone else knowing (bar hermione and dumbledore) and saved him.

that’s so slytherin!!!

it is my belief that Voldemort thus inadvertently pushes Harry to be more cunning. Harry is at his most slytherin during his daring but clever escapes from Voldemort and the indirect issues caused by Voldemort.

though it has less text evidence, i would also go so far to throw out that because of how pissed off Harry makes voldemort, it’s the same in reverse. Harry pushes Voldemort to be more reckless and daring in his effort to capture/kill him, as if a gryffindor.

i guess there’s a lot of poetry there. the more polarized they get from one another, the more alike they become. as they clash, they transform themselves into the other.

idk

maybe i'm missing something, but why wouldn't you listen to a doctor's opinion of whether you're in pain or fatigue?

Okay, I’ve thought about this question for most of a day, because the obvious answer is “….why would I?”, but it’s clearly not obvious to you.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. They’re a doctor. They’re a professional you’ve gone to for help. And pain and fatigue are, like, medical things, right? Going to a doctor about medical stuff and then saying “LOL NOPE” to what the doctor says is like hiring a plumber and then arguing about how to fix your sink, right? If you’re so smart, why’d you call the plumber over?

Okay.

But now imagine your basement is flooding and you call the plumber. While on the phone, the plumber asks you what the problem is and you say that there’s a pipe in your basement that’s burst and it’s now flooded.

And the plumber—still on the phone—says “LOL NOPE.”

And you say, “Excuse me?”

The plumber says, “Look, a flooded basement is a really severe problem, okay? Usually, these calls, they’re a clogged toilet or a leaky u-bend under the sink. Trust me, this is better. Those are a lot cheaper to fix.”

And you say, “I’m sure they are, but I’m telling you, my basement is flooded. I’m looking down the stairs and I can see the water.”

“I’m just saying, there are other things it could be. It won’t hurt anything to eliminate them first,” the plumber says.

And you say, “But I need my basement fixed! Look, I can’t go down in my basement and do laundry right now, and I have important keepsakes down there in boxes… some of them are already ruined, but maybe I can salvage some if we can just fix the problem.”

“Well, then it will be in your interest for me to check your toilets and your u-bends,” the plumber says.

“The problem is not in my toilets or my sinks,” you say. “I am looking at the problem. I called you because my basement is flooded, and I need you to help me fix that.”

And then… now, I’m not assuming you’re female, but I just want to emphasize that this is a starkly though not exclusively gendered phenomenon, so if you’re not female then imagine you are.

“MA’AM,” the plumber says, in a way you recognize. It’s the voice of putting you in your place, the voice of unearned authority, and with this voice, this word, ma’am, is not a title of respect, it’s a reminder and a command. “MA’AM, if you’ll just calm down. I’m sure what you’re experiencing seems terrible to you, but the truth is, it’s probably not as bad as it looks from where you’re standing. And that’s a good thing! Trust me, have been a plumber for 27 years. Now, when can I come over to check your u-bends?”

“It’s not my u-bends!” you say.

“Ma’am, if you don’t want to be helped, I’ll start to think you’re calling for attention.”

You see?

(Now for bonus points, imagine the plumber refuses to help you until you lose a statistically improbable amount of weight just to rule out that this might be flooding your basement, or is acting on the subconscious but deeply entrenched idea that people with your skin color are less susceptible to flooding and in less need of help, or believes that as a feeeemale you’re more likely to be suffering from emotional distress than a physical problem and suggests the preferable course of action would be for you to take a nap every time the supposed flooding in your basement bothers you.)

As I said in that post, pain and fatigue — like dysphoria — are qualitative experiences. This means they happen in your head and they cannot be directly observed or measured by anyone else (which would make them quantitative phenomena). 

The doctor talking to you about dysphoria —or pain or fatigue — is not a plumber in your house, they are a plumber on the phone. The only input they receive about the problem is your account of it. 

And if they’re not willing to listen to what you say and aren’t willing to take you at your word, then all the expertise and experience in the world doesn’t matter. You can have the most powerful calculator in the world but if you type the wrong numbers into it it will still give the wrong answers. Someone can be the best doctor in the world but if they’re ignoring the information they’re not going to give you the right answer.