I Dont Want To Get Too Off Topic On This Blog But Since This Is A Somewhat Big Platform I Want To Talk

Thanks for the tag! (p.s so true @totallynotaterrorist I straight up adopt people who like my fanfics 💀)

Your turn! @friendlyneighbourhoodfanficer @egonspenglersweetie @artistictrinityarts

Guess who just learned how to find picrews?

Picrew

껍질-미리깐 메이커

껍질-미리깐 메이커 / Pre-Cracked maker 엑스트라A twitter @extra_nocpno email 02louis11@gmail.com 2022/01/30 제 picrew를 NFT로 등록하지 마세요. DON'T REGISTER MY

Yay :D

No pressure: @smolldust @dizzthetired @randomperson1638 @specificyeetcapacity

And everyone who wants to try

OMFG MY ENGLISH CLASS HAS LITERALLY SAID THAT FANFICS ARE AN OPTION!!! Ok, let me elaborate- in English, we’ve been reading a novel. Today, we have to go through a list of tasks and choose something to do about the novel. ONE OF THE OPTIONS IS FANFICTION! THEY ARE TRYING TO SMOKE US OUT.

And bestie you best believe that I’m doing it.

THIS^^ IS EVERYTHING

Oh man I was scrambling trough tumblr tag and I saw this LB quote about Aleksander: "The Darkling is beautiful, I wanted to create a leader who was charismatic, appealing, a dictator you could imagine yourself following, an antagonist you couldn't just dismiss. [...] The Darkling is beautiful and broken and had a rough childhood, but he's also a brutal, manipulative monster with no regard for human life. He's dangerous because he's seductive, because he evokes sympathy.

…I just don’t even know when to start with this? Can she come off as anymore ignorant and offensive by trying to sound so woke. I mean “beautiful and broken”?! Are you kidding me?!

(Book Spoilers. Trigger Warning: Trauma and Mental Health)

Hmm well I'm not sure you could really sum it up as a 'rough childhood' more like a rough life filled with alot of trauma that has left him isolated and struggling to form human connections. Also I'm not sure I like the term monster for someone who is made the way they are through trauma and also the line about him having no regard for human life is just false he has lines he wont cross which is why he didn't harm the grisha children in book 3 and he was never going to because he values their lives. To be honest though I had some issues with the way LB dealt with trauma and mental health in the books. Not just with Aleks either but with Sergei too, actually I found the way she treated Sergei and his mental health in the last book rather appalling. Sergei is established as being severely traumatised by losing Marie to the point where he struggles to function properly. I think out of all the characters in the trilogy he's depicted as having the worst trauma, all the other characters have bad dreams and what not but Sergei really does find it debilitating and he struggles with day to day tasks like eating, sleeping and even just walking/travelling takes its toll on him. But Alina's attitude towards Sergei at times was troubling. To be clear though I'm not blaming the character for this as it was just the way she was written but she seems to consider Sergei weak and his mental health a hindrance. Here are some extracts from R&R the first is right after Sergei accidently revealed Genya's real name to Nikolai:

I shot to my feet. “What happened?”

“Sergei let her real name slip. He seems to be taking to heights about as well as he took to caves.” I released a growl of frustration. Genya had played a key role in the Darkling’s plot to depose the King. I’d tried to be patient with Sergei, but now he’d put her in danger and jeopardised our position with Nikolai.

Sergei was nowhere to be found. Probably a good thing, since I didn’t have time to give him the pummelling he deserved.

And like I understand that this must have been a frustrating situation but Alina knows that Sergei is struggling with his trauma and that he didn't mean to cause anyone any harm. I can understand her frustration but I really don't like the line about the 'pummelling he deserves'. I just don't like the suggestion that a person who is clearly suffering from a mental health issue deserves to be punished for making a mistake because of his trauma. Here's another instance where Alina is annoyed at Sergei:

Sergei had slowed us during our fight with the militia. He was unstable. I could apologise, offer useless words, but I didn’t know how to help him, and it didn’t change the fact that we were at war. Sergei had become a liability.

Again I get the frustration but again I have issues with the suggestion that because they are at war Sergei should just pull it together. Or even this image that's being painted that people who have mental health issues are just a burden on those around them. People in real life who suffer with similar mental health issues like depression and anxiety often worry about feeling like a burden to their loved ones so this could be really triggering for them. Then there is this from Baghra:

“We came to find you. What’s the matter with that boy?”

“He’s had a hard time of it,” I said, leading them away from the tank room.

“Who hasn’t?”

“He saw the girl he loved gutted by your son and held her while she died.”

“Suffering is cheap as clay and twice as common. What matters is what each man makes of it."

This one really troubled me because its like LB is saying that you can control your own trauma or decide how the trauma is going to effect you. It's again this suggestion that Sergei is weak because he struggled with his trauma more than others did. But the part that actually kind of disgusted me when I read it and I actually had to stop reading the book for a bit because of how much it upset me is how the characters talk about Sergei after his death. Alina had sent Sergei away because she felt he had become a liability and he then went back to the darkling and told them all the information he had on Alina and co. This move was obviously one born of his trauma and was made out of desperation. On several occasions Sergei has said he is struggling with feeling safe and no matter how hard he tries he never feels safe. Alina even tells us that Sergei had gone back to the darkling looking for reassurance and safety which really makes sense, this man grew up at the LP the one place where grisha could be safe, he grew up under the protection of the darkling. Then he chose to stand with Alina and went through the trauma and grief of losing the woman he loved horrifically in an attack against the LP which was his original safe place. He then never feels safe again so it would make sense for him to go back to what previously had made him feel safe, the LP and the Darkling. But this is what the other characters say about Sergei after he is killed by the darkling:

I sat beside him, unsure what to say. I remembered sitting like this with Sergei in the tank room, searching for words of comfort and failing. Had he been scheming then, manipulating me? His fear had certainly seemed real.

Abruptly, Zoya said, “I should have known Sergei couldn’t be trusted. He was always a weakling.”

Though that seemed unfair, I let it pass.

“Oncat never liked him,” Harshaw added.

Genya fed a branch to the fire. “Do you think he was planning it all along?”

“I’ve been wondering that,” I admitted. “I thought he’d be better once we got out of the White Cathedral and the tunnels, but he almost seemed worse, more anxious.”

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, “I’m glad Sergei’s dead. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to wring his neck myself.”

Steel is earned. Adrik had that steel, and so did Nadia. She’d proven it again in our flight from the Elbjen. A part of me had wondered what Tamar saw in her. But Nadia had been in some of the worst fighting at the Little Palace. She’d lost her best friend and the life she’d always known. Yet she hadn’t fallen apart like Sergei or chosen life underground like Maxim. Through all of it, she’d stayed steady.

And yes again I understand why they feel betrayed but they knew that Sergei was struggling and instead of understanding that Alina is accusing him of manipulating her and Zoya is saying he couldn't be trusted and that he was a weakling. To be honest it kind of reminds me of the way people talk about the darkling. Instead of recognising their trauma and trying to understand they jump straight to well they were a bad, untrustworthy person who was manipulating me.

Then there is the last part where Alina is thinking about how Adrik and Nadia are strong because although they faced trauma they were able to keep going and keep fighting but not Sergei, Sergei was crippled by his grief and his trauma and this means he was weak. Maybe its because I have struggled with crippling mental health issues myself where I couldn't even get out of bed let alone do anything else but I just found this implication that Sergei was weak really offensive to those who do struggle that way. People deal with trauma in different ways and whilst some people can fight through it and will just have a keep calm and carry on attitude others can't, others just fall apart, but that doesn't make them weak. I also don't think this 'just carry on and push through it' attitude towards mental health issues is necessarily a healthy message. If you need help then you should ask for it and be able to have access to it. LB could have used this as an opportunity to show a character who is severely traumatised getting support and help to work through his trauma and heal. But I feel like nobody really helped Sergei and any comfort or support he got seemed to be grudgingly given and there was more of an attitude of I'll try to help you because your issues are a hindrance to me than because any of the characters actually cared about him and wanted to help him.

Sergei and the Darkling were both characters that were 'beautiful and broken' but neither one of them was given the support or help they needed. Instead they were painted as either weak or as a monster. So what kind of message does this send to readers who also struggle with trauma and mental health conditions?

Calling all archaeoblurs!

If you're an archaeologist* and have a Tumblr, reblog this or sound off in the comments! I figured it's high time we put together a directory of sorts.

*for our purposes, archaeologist can mean someone who has or is working on a degree in archaeology, you don't necessarily have to be currently practicing. If you have a blog that is specifically archaeology focused, include that and what your specialty is!

PROOF IN CASE YOU NEED IT

Something i wrote

So i don’t know if anyone will even see this, but basically, at my school we have a tutoring program and i am in it for advanced English. Every lesson we start off with ten minutes writing to do with the prompt given. This was what i wrote: I’m posting because I’m actually quite happy with what i wrote for once. The prompt was; Slowly the embers flickered, fighting against the cold. Here’s what i wrote:

Atheria stared into the fire, the heat burning into her eyes and burning her skin. As the night entered it’s fullest form, and the air grew impossibly cold, the embers flickered-fighting against the cold. The crudely built fire struggled to stay alive, the last flames beginning to die off. She huddled closer, trying to squeeze the last ounces of heat from the fire, in useless hopes that she might stay warm. Unsurprisingly, the fire died, and Atheria was left frigid, and alone.

 She was awoken by the sun’s bright rays gently caressing her eyelids, as if saying to “it’s time, you must awaken” in a sweet, honey like voice. The first sound she heard was the light rushing of the stream nearby. The sound of the stream was accompanied by a symphony of sounds as the native wildlife awoke, and the world around her began to come to life. The long-dead fire laid limply beside her, not a single plume of smoke arose; she would have to find more wood, dry wood if possible.

Today, I was out with my nan, eventually we got to the discussion of me getting a job. My mum doesn’t want me to get a job until 3 months into the school year because I’m doing VCE history in yr 10. I spoke about how ill have to look for an employer who doesn’t care about my epilepsy, which is going to be a bit difficult because there are so many teens looking for jobs rn, and I’m pretty sure an employer is going to choose a non-epileptic person rather than me. I made a comment about how crappy it is having all your friends work and you being the only one not working, my nan then proceeded to lecture me about ‘how it’s just the way it is, and that it’s like your pop, he has PTSD, but he can’t do anything about it.”

I’m so sick of all these people, more specifically adults, talking to me and lecturing me and telling me off when it comes to my epilepsy like they know what I’m going through, like they understand. They can sympathise sure, but only on a certain level, their understanding doesn’t go as deep as mine does, and I’m so sick of them pretending that they have that understanding.

And it’s not just the adults in my life that do it, so do my friends. They try to understand, they try to say things to support me when I’m anxious to the lead up of a hospital appointment. They don’t understand that this hospital appointment could literallly change the way my life is operating, it could change everything. They don’t know that anxiety of whether this hospital appointment is going to be the one when they tell you that your never going to come off your meds. They don’t know the utter disappointment and regret that you feel when you come to consciouness after a seizure and realise what happened. They don’t understand that gut wrenching fear that you feel coming out of a seizure, on the floor, limbs sore, nauseous, with an excruciating headache not having a clue what happened or where you are.

Being a teenager is overwhelming. Being a teenager with a chronic illness who constantly lives in fear of having a seizure while also dealing with the crappy people who tease you for it or force harmful stereotypes on you is a whole other level.

The point of this post is that I’m so sick of people pretending to know what I’m going through, I’m so sick of it that it makes me want to scream. And I’m so sick of having epilepsy.

*Insert drumroll here* I DID IT!!

My first ever fanfiction has been completed and is currently up and posted (link here-https://www.tumblr.com/blog/forthemasses1789) I am so excited that I got it done earlier than expected and I am so proud of the work I did! Here's to hoping it does well!

forthemasses1789.tumblr.com

I write fanfiction, that's about it.

I write faniction for a lot of different fandoms, please don't hesitate to request something, even...

Hey guys! So I don’t know if anyone will see this or care, but this is my Fanfiction account, it would mean a lot if you would go check it out! Or maybe go and request something? I really want to improve on my fanfic writing skills and as an avid fanfic reader it would be amazing to be able to become part of the community who writes Fanfiction!

And to those who say, but second hand books and read them, what about the one who buys a second hand book, reads it, thinks wow how awesome is this i need to find more and starts supporting JK not knowing what an terf asshole she is.

You are still perpetuating the fandom.

It does make me wonder if she was a homophobe, racist, facist etc whether her ‘fans’ would still be like - but you can support the art but not the artist’ She isnt like Lovecraft who everyone knows he was a racist bigot. He is dead, his work is known for it’s time but it’s not affecting current policy, like JK Rowlings work IS.

The UK anti trans bills that came in were also a direct result of HER LOBBYING PARLIMENT.