hushpiper

Regarding religious viewpoints on abortion

2022-05-04T06:24:03Z

I wrote this unfortunately long "summary" in a youtube comment, funnily enough. In light of current news, I think it's worth copying it here, so here it is in its entirety.

The religious viewpoints on abortion were touched on a bit [in the video I was commenting on], but deserve some more specific addressing. Many religious groups take an anti-abortion stance, but in almost every case, it is a primarily political stance, NOT theological, though most people in those groups don't realize it. Long summary and then sources/further reading:

Talmudic rulings and practice in Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism require abortion in cases where it has any chance of harming the mother. It is stated in Exodus in the original Hebrew that a person who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry is subject to a fine, not to death as would be the case if it were considered murder (which also carries over to abortion, as abortions are simply intentional miscarriages), which is interpreted to mean an unborn child is not fully human yet. Many poskim discreetly and privately approve abortions for the Orthodox women in their care, which they would be unable to do if abortion were outlawed;
Mormons believe that life begins long before conception and that stillborn or miscarried children (and thus by extension aborted children) may not have been ensouled at time of "death" (they do not require temple ordinances to be performed for them), and that if they were ensouled, they either did not require an Earth life, or will get another chance at it. Mormon policy does penalize voluntary abortions, but supports them in cases of rape, incest, and harm to the mother;
(White) Evangelicals have historically held varied views on when life begins, either at birth or at conception. However unlike the Catholics, the life-at-conception camps largely didn't develop specific theology around it. This is part of why the largest Evangelical denomination in America, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), passed several resolutions in the 70s in support of abortion for cases of rape, incest, and harm (including emotional and mental harm) to the mother, and in favor of a limited governmental approach which gave expectant mothers access to "the full range of medical services", and 90% of Texas Baptists believed their state's abortion laws were too restrictive, among many other signs of the pro-abortion-access and abortion-apathetic positions that were common then. Abortion was seen by Evangelicals as a primarily Catholic issue, not something that affected them.

I can't speak for the political reasons for Orthodox Jewish alignment with the pro-life movement, so I'll refrain from comment there. Mormon anti-abortion advocacy is complicated, but has been convincingly argued to be part of their long-running (and still incomplete) attempt to "assimilate" into American society, thereby hopefully stamping out anti-Mormon bigotry and achieving access to the privileges of mainstream acceptance. The same can be said for the rest of their allegiance to right-wing American politics and the Republican party.

Evangelical opposition to abortion is its own animal, but it has been convincingly argued that this was (unfortunately) related to the desegregation of schools, opposition to which marked the starting point of the formation of the Religious Right. After this it was helped along by opposition to the ERA by activists like Phyllis Schlafly (a Catholic who was very popular among Evangelical women), eventually culminating in the formation of the Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell Sr. (who was notably anti-desegregation) in 1979. The SBC issued a resolution in June 1979 in favor of abortion access, as they had throughout the 70s; also in June 1979, the Moral Majority was born. In June 1980, the SBC issued a resolution in favor of "appropriate legislation and/or a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother."

Regarding Judaism:

https://twitter.com/AbbyChavaStein/status/1466426335946022921
https://forward.com/life/406674/orthodox-jewish-women-abortion-stories/
https://lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/the-torah-of-reproductive-freedom?s=w (scroll past the images to get to the theological discussion)

Regarding Mormonism:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/ (specific searches include "abortion", "premortal existence", and "salvation"
https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1433790722759708700
The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation by Armand Mauss
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/ and https://sunstone.org/ have many open-access articles discussing Mormonism from the 60s and 70s onwards, including regarding abortion, the ERA, "model minority" status and assimilation.

Regarding Evangelicalism:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/05/abortion-opposition-focus-white-evangelical-anger
https://billmoyers.com/2014/07/17/when-southern-baptists-were-pro-choice/ (and the articles it links to)
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734303135/throughline-traces-evangelicals-history-on-the-abortion-issue
https://www.johnstonsarchive.net/baptist/sbcabres.html
https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/how-southern-baptists-became-pro-life/
Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (argues against the idea that Evangelical support for Trump was merely practical)

comments

Signal Boost: my brain, stomping it’s feet: i wanna use one... - Star Follies

2021-03-29T04:22:21Z

starfollies posted: my brain, stomping it’s feet: i wanna use one... - Star Follies

jayykesley:
my brain, stomping it’s feet: i wanna use one inconsequential negative experience to spiral into an echo-chamber of self hatred!!!
me, stirring my tea with my little plastic knife: no, we don’t do that anymore

comments

Signal Boost: The fact that 2021 begun with a sea shanty...

2021-03-28T17:51:30Z

out-there-on-the-maroon posted: The fact that 2021 begun with a sea shanty...

kurosmind:
The fact that 2021 begun with a sea shanty renaissance and three months later ships are back on the 1700 trade routes is, actually, extremely funny.

comments

Signal Boost: gay gallifreyans, or gayllifreyans, scottishwobbly:“Speak not of what men deserve."

2021-03-21T20:08:49Z

venndaai posted: gay gallifreyans, or gayllifreyans, scottishwobbly:“Speak not of what men deserve. For...

“Speak not of what men deserve. For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”

— Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed.

comments

Signal Boost: , *cartoon german boy i brought clubbing comes up to...

2021-03-12T22:40:10Z

graynard posted: , *cartoon german boy i brought clubbing comes up to...

*cartoon german boy i brought clubbing comes up to me with his hair tousled and lipstick marks all over his face* ve ahre pohpping pussy like pjimples und pjopcorn! *gets pulled back into the crowd* mein leben!

comments

Signal Boost: I MISS YOUR FACES — andgladly: fwips: my pet peeve are fic...

2021-02-07T06:00:38Z

wryamihere posted: I MISS YOUR FACES — andgladly: fwips: my pet peeve are fic...

fwips

my pet peeve are fic summaries with something deep and obscure that not only tell me nothing about the story but dont MEAN anything theyre just words like
‘When lost eyes lock onto a summer’s shadow, will love make it in the end?? [content warnings]: anal fisting ‘

andgladly

I think I just inhaled coffee through my nose.

comments

Signal Boost: incorrectgreekgods: i-will-not-be-caged: ... - Tumblr

2021-02-06T07:56:16Z

incorrectgreekgods:

i-will-not-be-caged:
ramblingferret:
teroknortailor:
sci-fantasy:
fiftysevenacademics:
crystalandrock:
gertrudefrankenstein:
Millennial Sisyphus keeps entering all the information from his resume into the web form, only for it to delete everything when he tries to move to the next page. He just goes back and types it all up again, over and over again, forever, and he never gets a job.
Millennial Tantalus has been promised that his unpaid internship will become a paid position as soon as the company has space for him. Every week he sees their new job posting. Every week he asks his boss if he can have a real job. The boss shrugs apologetically and says he’ll just have to make do with being paid in experience a little longer. He goes back and keeps working, over and over again, forever, and he never reaches the fruits of his labors.
Millennial Persephone can’t get a job without a degree, but because she had to take out loans to pay for college, she must spend 1/3 of her life working just to pay them off.
Millennial Cassandra’s title is Social Media Coordinator, she was hired to be the expert, but every time she tries to explain the problems in her company’s social media decisionmaking, the managers don’t listen…and end up hiring expensive PR flacks to repair the damage to their reputation when things blow up exactly as she predicted.
Millennial Medusa uses multiple shades of primer and opaque foundation to cover the scars snaking across her face, hiding the bruises, aligning the asymmetry in her broken nose and jaw. Red matte on the lips, green shimmer on the lids. Flawless liner on the first try. She’s had lots and lots of practice. She films her transformation in secret for all to see and learn, and again, men are turned to anonymous stone faces screaming in horror. “Liar!” “Witch!” “Take her swimming on the first date!” These words do not discourage her. These words are a challenge. GlamGorgonXx posts another video.
Millennial Prometheus uploads another PDF to his site. He’s lost track of the printing and edition of this textbook. He knows they just rearranged some of chapters then charge 150 dollars per copy, and the professor wrote the book himself. the ZIP fills uploads successfully, and he starts uploading the next one. He isn’t afraid of the potential lawsuit. knowledge shouldn’t held out of reach like this.
Millennial Circe screenshots all the lewd messages she gets from men on online dating sites and posts them on her very popular Instagram along with their pictures and usernames. When people accuse her of attempting to destroy their reputations, she insists she’s just revealing them for the pigs they truly are.
Milennial Pandora opens an email in her spam box. Oh, what’s this link? She clicks on it. Suddenly viruses and lags spread over her computer.

(I promise you the nested blockquotes are much less awful here than on Tumblr...)

comments

Signal Boost:"Hot take: "Fanfic is bad actually" discourse" / Twitter

2021-02-04T04:32:45Z

Amberite's Eschatological Cabaret 🌈⛥✡⛧they/them on Twitter

Hot take: "Fanfic is bad actually" discourse is just repackaged "fast food vs slow food" discourse, with the same veiled sneering class politics and a side order of pulling up the ladder behind you.

Yeah, there's a lot to critique about fast food! But the people eating it are there because they just want food and your quality-gatekept establishment isn't making stuff that works for them.

If you want that to change, fix that establishment.

comments

my new favorite depression song

2021-02-03T20:28:28Z

but you'll be alright
you'll wake up on the other side
and the sun will rise
maybe you will be surprised

and you'll wake up
and you'll see the sky
cos the sun will rise
over the year

comments

EMDR Neurobiology

2021-01-28T04:55:53Z

"Your Behaviour Won't Be The Same" | Dr. Andrew Huberman (Stanford Neuroscientist) - YouTube

An interesting video briefly going over some of the neurobiological roots of EMDR, i.e. that one therapy where you move your eyes back and forth while talking about bad memories. I have a friend going through this therapy right now, so we've been curious about it, something that youtube's algorithm apparently caught onto. I didn't expect the connection to walking, but it makes sense given how much easier tough conversations go on walks than otherwise.

comments

Signal Boost: i think it's fucked up that there are plants that...

2021-01-28T01:28:02Z

baebeyza posted: do robotic butterflies taste with their feet? — i think it's fucked up that there are plants that...

iridescentjaq

my tree biology teacher fed her calcium-deficient tree a whole-ass bbq rib bone - she stuck it in the ground near the base of the tree (after eating the meat off of it), and when she came back to collect it to show the tree biology class it was GONE
the tree had grown a root up through the center of it & out through the sides
also there’s an old story about a man who was buried beneath a tree, and when they went to exhume the body it had been completely absorbed by the tree’s roots- you could see the shape of the body in the way the roots grew, splitting up for clearly defined arms and legs. trees will absolutely eat a steak if you bury it & they need the nutrients.

comments

Signal Boost: I remember a place I've never been. I remember,... - Elsewhere University

2021-01-27T02:24:28Z

elsewhereuniversity posted: I remember a place I've never been. I remember,... - Elsewhere University

Anonymous asked:
I remember a place I've never been. I remember, and that is terrifying enough. Worse is that I know I won't find it again - or at least not any time soon.
Halfway places are a blessing and a curse, the misplaced and irrational nostalgia not the least of it.
#liminal spaces
#vignettes
#Anonymous

As do I, anon. As do I.

comments

HP Marya Morevna: Chatlog

2021-01-23T20:47:06Z

A while back, I was on a Harry Potter kick, and I retold the story of Marya Morevna/The Death of Koschei the Deathless in the Harry Potter universe to a good friend. It was great fun, and I'd love to adapt it into an actual Harry Potter fic sometime. So I figured, the best way to start is to clean up the chat logs and put them somewhere I'll remember them--and others can enjoy them!

So that's this post. There are some things here that I wasn't quite able to adapt into the HP world, so I'm open to suggestions about that. Hopefully y'all enjoy it as much as we did.

Hush

there's one in particular which I think would work super well if retold as taking place in the past of the harry potter world: marya morevna

Hush

(oh but side note: there's a whole category of songs AND stories where a musical instrument is made out of a murdered person's body, and when it's played it tells the story of the person's murder, usually leading to the murderer's execution. that should be told way more often.)

Hush

(I kinda collect recordings of it)

Ipecac

You briefly mentioned the corpse instrument in the context of writing a fanfic that's like it, but I didn't know you collect recordings of it and whatnot.

Hush

yeah, that's one of the main ones I collect. it's not an exhaustive collection, but I have it in a bunch of different languages. folklore puts me in a hoarding sort of mood, as soon as I read/hear one story I want five more versions of it lol

Ipecac

That's interesting. I really didn't know that about you. I get the appeal though, especially where you compared it to fanfic.

Hush

it's also good for jazz and blues, which kinda work the same way, everybody doing their own take on a song, sometimes with no idea who wrote it. "in the pines" is one of my favorites in that category

Hush

but! harry potter

Ipecac

Yes, Harry Potter.

Hush

so, telling the story in harry potter terms: there once was a muggle prince who had three sisters. their mother and father told the prince on their deathbeds, to give them away in marriage to the first suitors who come to woo them, and he agreed

Hush

one day, with great magical fanfare--claps of thunder, the ceiling splitting open, showy charms like that--in flies a falcon, who turns into a young wizard, an animagus, and asks to marry the oldest sister. she agrees.

Hush

the same thing happens with the other two sisters, a year apart each: the second oldest marries an animagus whose form is an eagle, and the youngest marries an animagus whose form is a raven.

Hush

but you know, then they go and live with their husbands, and the prince is lonely, so he decides to go on a journey.

Hush

as he's riding, one day he comes over a hill to see the scene of a recently ended battle, and a whole army lying dead. as he picks his way through the battlefield, he finds a living man who tells him the victor was the army of the fair princess marya morevna

Hush

so he goes on until he finds her tent, and she (a muggle like himself) invites him to stay with her for a while. she decides she likes him, and marries him (he's smitten, of course, but that's secondary), and carries him off to live in her kingdom.

Hush

at some point in their happy married life, she decides to go off and fight another war, leaving home affairs to her husband (whose name is ivan), and tells him he has free rein of everything, except that he must not look in one specific closet.

Hush

so of course he does.

Ipecac

Because of course. May as well have put a forbidden apple in there for good measure.

Hush

of course

Hush

(note, the "don't look in this one place" story element is common but always the husband telling the wife not to look, so it's a fun gender-swap here)

Hush

so: he opens the closet. inside, there's a wizened old man, chained up with a really excessive size and amount of chains

Ipecac

I'm imagining Mr. T, but an old white dude.

Hush

yes, but skinny, incredibly skinny. the old man tells ivan that he's been chained up there for ten years, during which time he hasn't eaten or drunk anything, and he asks ivan for water to drink.

Ipecac

Still a funny mental image.

Hush

lol yes

Hush

very unwisely, ivan gives him bucket after bucket of water to drink, and the old man slowly regains his strength--becoming much more Mr. T-like--until he stands up, breaks all the chains at once

Hush

and tells ivan that he will never see his marya morevna again, and turns into a whoosh of black smoke (in the way of dark wizards) and flies out the window. ivan later receives word that she's been kidnapped

Ipecac

I love how that black smoke description is so vivid.

Hush

presumably it was passed down in the pages of black wizards weekly until voldemort found it and taught it to the death eaters

Ipecac

I love that there's enough news in this secret society to justify a weekly periodical.

Hush

and enough dark wizards lol

Hush

so ivan is like "oh shit I gotta go find her" and goes out on a journey to find her, but first he goes to each of his wizard brothers in law for advice. he and his sisters catch up, hugs and kisses, and then he tells the story of what's happened

Hush

and his brothers in law go "oh you done fucked up, that was koschei the deathless"

Ipecac

That's actually delightful and I didn't expect the lovely family reunion.

Hush

it'd been a long time, he missed them! he'd meant to visit earlier but, you know, he was newly wed and all that

Hush

so the wizards get him caught up: koschei is a powerful dark wizard, who had been defeated by marya morevna herself--purely through strength and cunning, since she was a muggle; the story doesn't say how she did that, which is a crying shame because it sounds fucking lit--BUT the problem is, he can't be killed.

Ipecac

Damn, I'd pay hella money to have that story made into a movie.

Hush

right? marya morevna is badass as hell

Hush

you see, koschei had created a horcrux: he placed his soul inside a needle, which was inside an egg inside a golden chest buried under an oak tree on a mystical island called Bouyan, which appeared and disappeared with the tides and was very hard to get to, if you could even find it.

Hush

you could only kill him by destroying that needle, but since nobody was able to do that, marya morevna simply held him in captivity without food and water, which weakened him enough that he couldn't escape.

Ipecac

But... Why inside an egg?

Hush

I mean, if you want the out-of-story reason, there are some traditional amulets in... I think it was turkey, thereabouts? that are shaped like a needle inside an egg, iirc.

Hush

so idk, maybe he thought it was appropriate

Hush

in one version the egg is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which nests in a hollow log by a pond on bouyan

Ipecac

What the fuck.

Hush

yeah

Hush

you can see why I went with the egg in a golden chest version

Ipecac

Thank you. I can absolutely accept a needle in an egg now. Wizards are big on symbolism, and ducks aren't big on bring inside hares.

Hush

hahaha yes, I'm glad it works

Hush

ivan's like "well I gotta get my sexy badass wife back", so his wizard brothers give him directions and each ask him for some item belonging to him that was made of silver--cutlery, a snuffbox, that sort of thing--to remember him by

Hush

and so, ivan goes riding until he comes to where marya morevna is. the story, weirdly enough, does not give any details as to what that place is like, just that it's where koschei lives. I'm gonna say it's some creepy castle, something appropriate for an evil wizard

Hush

ivan sneaks in while koschei is out hunting--the stories

Hush

*the stories say koschei rides some wild, superfast horse with a non-standard amount of legs, but since this is harry potter (and I haven't re-read the magical beasts book recently) I'm gonna say he rides a thestral

Ipecac

Fair. Thestral is a solid choice. But also how did he know where she was? Is it just well known where koschei lives?

Hush

in the stories ivan just like, rides around until he finds it? but that's lame, so we can say his wizard brothers-in-law gave him either directions or some kind of charmed object that would lead him to marya morevna (who is always, always referred to with her full name btw, no I don't know why, but I like it)

Ipecac

I like this change, it's way better than the wandering. The full name sounds way more badass.

Hush

she's badass enough rit saying her full name

Ipecac

It sounds so weird to just say marya.

Hush

so: ivan sneaks in while koschei is out hunting with his thestral and finds marya morevna, who (after kissing and hugging him tight) is like "WHY DID YOU LET HIM OUT I SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOU NOT TO"

Hush

and ivan is like "sorry I'm so sorry although to be fair you could have just told me you had an evil wizard there instead of being all mysterious about it but that's neither here nor there, please forgive me and let's get out of here"

Ipecac

If I were her, that'd always be the first thing I told anyone. Like, just so you know I'm a colossal badass and that closet has an unkillable wizard in it.

Hush

indeed. I suppose she might've been keeping it secret for fear that somebody might come to free him--maybe he has friends, maybe she was just concerned about well-meaning adventurers who would try to come kill him themselves and inevitably fail

Hush

I think some modern versions of the story have it that koschei and marya morevna were previously in some kind of relationship

Hush

hence why he takes her captive to live with him in his creepy wizard tower rather than just killing her or whatever

Hush

so maybe she has some leftover feelings, or maybe she's just like "nobody knows this guy like I do, so I've gotta keep him close"

Ipecac

Or maybe she just likes secrets. Most sexy badasses do from what I've heard.

Hush

that too

Hush

also, given the animagus brothers-in-law know about it, that kinda implies either they were involved, or it's not a secret to wizards--OR they didn't know, and just correctly concluded from ivan's description that it was koschei, and were like "wtf, so when he disappeared it was bc he was chained up in a muggle warrior princess's closet? how did that even happen?"

Hush

so, they go... but koschei is too fast, and catches up to them and steals marya morevna back. since folklore likes things to go in groups of three, they do this three times, and the first two times koschei refrains from hurting ivan out of thanks for giving him water, and ivan does a lot of weeping over losing his wife over and over again.

Ipecac

Sounds super tedious though, so I love the rule of threes handwave.

Hush

yeah, it has some fun little repeating wording with koschei's horse telling him all the shit they can do before going to get them and still be able to catch up to them, bc koschei's horse is so ridiculously fast and can also talk, but it really takes too long to tell

Hush

though there is a nice little exchange where marya morevna is like "ivan! he's going to chop you up into little pieces!" and ivan is like "let him! I cannot live without you!"

Ipecac

Oh damn, that's bold as hell.

Hush

they're a cute couple, even if he's kinda dumb and she's kinda too good for him. he must be super good looking

Ipecac

Or just really funny. Or maybe he's good in bed.

Hush

or all of the above!

Ipecac

He's no sexy badass, but he's quite a catch.

Hush

maybe they're really your typical fairy tale couple, but genderswapped. so he's got all the traits of a fairy tale woman: beautiful, faithful, loved by all he meets, etc etc

Ipecac

This is the kind of gender equality that I'm here for.

Hush

SO the third time koschei catches up to them (and this upcoming part is harder to translate into harry potter terms so we'll have to come back to that), he chops ivan up into little pieces just like marya morevna said, puts the chunks into a barrel, seals it up, and throws it into the ocean

Ipecac

That seems... Overkill...

Hush

it's very unnecessary

Hush

when this happens, the silver things ivan had given to his brothers-in-law all turn black: they had placed a spell on them to track his well-being

Hush

the eagle flies out to sea, finds the barrel, and drags it ashore, while the falcon and raven go to get "the water of life" and "the water of death" respectively

Ipecac

Because of course you need both. Why wouldn't you?

Hush

very important to have both

Hush

then they all get together, take his pieces out of the barrel and arrange them properly. they sprinkle the pieces with the water of death, and they all join together so the body is whole again. then they sprinkle the body with the water of life, and ivan wakes up and is like "wow how long was I asleep?"

Hush

and his brothers-in-law are like "you would've been sleeping much longer if it wasn't for us, now come visit us!" and he's like "nay! for I must go get my sexy badass wife"

Hush

ivan is nothing if not determined

Hush

and that whole section with the water of life and death might have to be changed to fit into the harry potter universe, since resurrecting the dead is a deathly-hallows-only thing

Ipecac

Yeah, that's kind of a bit beyond the limitations of most HP stuff. Unless it's like Shin (heart guy) in Dorohedoro where he used magic to cut him up into little pieces, but in a way where he's still alive and in agony.

Ipecac

Hence the barrel into the sea.

Hush

I was about to reference a character in one piece who can do that, but you haven't met them yet. but yes, I think that's a pretty rad idea. then the brothers-in-law undo the curse. it makes the whole spell on the pieces of silver even more important, since if they hadn't been keeping an eye on him, he'd just be like that forever, drifting around on the sea in pieces.

Hush

not unlike koschei's imprisonment in the closet

Ipecac

Seems like he'd be totally into making people suffer for extended periods instead of killing them because of his time in the closet. teehee.

Hush

teeheehee

Hush

so ivan goes back to koschei's creepy castle, but this time ivan decides to be smart about it, so instead of running away with marya morevna, he sneaks in and asks her to ask koschei where he got such a fast horse. so she does, and koschei says he got it from baba yaga

Hush

he also gives directions to where baba yaga lives, which are appropriately ridiculous (beyond thrice nine lands in the thirtieth kingdom on the other side of a fiery river and up your ass etc)

Ipecac

The real baba yaga was inside our ass all along.

Hush

now, I don't know what kind of harry potter worldbuilding to do with baba yaga. is she a witch? she's ridiculously powerful if so. but she's also kinda amoral, so even though she has a tendency to kill people in terrible ways for tiny mistakes, she's more of a trickster figure?

Hush

so idk, maybe she's some kind of... fey thing? we have veela in the harry potter universe, so maybe there's other kinds of fey?

Hush

or, I guess hags are a thing in the harry potter universe (according to some wikis), so she can just be a hag

Ipecac

Babbitty Rabbity perhaps?

Hush

something like that

Ipecac

Dumb fucking name though.

Hush

incredibly dumb lol

Hush

either way, baba yaga exists, she's super powerful, and she has a herd of superfast thestrals. the deal is, you watch her herds for three days without losing a single one and she'll give you a foal, but if you lose any she'll kill you and put your head on a pike. but being herself, she plays dirty, and secretly orders the thestrals to actively run away from you.

Hush

prince ivan, in the way of fairy tales, does good deeds to various talking animals etc on his way to baba yaga's house, and so each day when the thestrals run away, they pay back the favor by gathering the thestrals up again

Hush

on the third day, the bees who had just finished rounding up the thestrals were like "okay we're done, but baba yaga's probably gonna kill you anyway, so sneak into her stable and steal the colt you'll find there, and ride away on it"

Ipecac

Could've just done that on the first day...

Hush

right

Hush

but nah, he's a good kid, he keeps end of the bargain up until it's clear the other person's not gonna keep theirs

Hush

*his end

Ipecac

One of the reasons he's with such a sexy badass.

Hush

exactly

Hush

he does so, and with the help of the various beings he's helped, he gets away. (clearly this whole section needs to be translated into harry potter terms, but we'll leave that for later. it's a sub-episode, it can be replaced with basically anything so long as he ends up with some mega fast form of transport it's fine. bonus points if he comes out with the moral high ground, having shown his good character.)

Ipecac

Agreed. It could be a rocket powered bicycle fueled by moral superiority if needed.

Hush

only starts for someone pure of heart

Hush

this is in the past though, mind, so the muggles haven't invented bicycles yet

Hush

well, he goes home and fattens up the colt, lets it grow up a bit, and it is indeed super mega awesome fast

Ipecac

Ah, so it's even cooler that he has one that's rocket powered.

Hush

that's a good point

Hush

so with his steed or other form of transportation, he goes again to where marya morevna is, and she's like "WTF YOU'RE ALIVE???" (and there's lots of hugging and kissing and crying) and she goes "how??" and he goes "oh, thus and thus," because weird fairy tale wording. "now come away with me! my ride is way faster than his"

Ipecac

I just realized I'm more invested in their relationship than I expected.

Hush

valid, they're one of the very best fairy tale relationships

Hush

so they ride away, and koschei realizes what has happened, but this time when he asks his thestral how long it'll take to catch up to them it's like "who knows, his ride is faster than me". koschei goes "fuck this shit, I'm chasing them anyway"

Hush

but when he arrives at the place where they are, they're ready for him. they knock him out and cut his head off. then they cremate his body, and--because he's still immortal, remember, his soul's still in his horcrux--they put his head in a barrel and toss it in the sea, then scatter his ashes to the four winds

Hush

then they go home, have a raucous party with his sisters and their husbands, who agree that marya morevna is badass and sexy as hell and worth all the trouble to rescue, and they live happily ever after

Ipecac

I love the approval. Mostly the way you worded it.

Hush

and then, many many many years later, in the present, someone finds a barrel washed up on some shore. when they open it up, they find a shriveled, disembodied head inside. it opens its eyes and says, "water! give me water!"

Hush

DUN DUN DUUUUUN

Hush

and then you write a fanfic where harry potter goes and kills koschei, since he's the expert on horcruxes and all that

Ipecac

I'll be honest, I kind of lost how this began. Was this a real life legend that you adapted to be HP themed yourself? Or an already existing thing? I loved it, and it's made for an entertaining day. I just lost the original motivation somewhere along the way.

Hush

\o/ entertainment achieved!

Hush

this is an existing russian fairy tale--called "marya morevna" or "the death of koschei the deathless", but the first name is clearly superior--which I think would be great adapted to harry potter

Hush

I like the idea of the harry potter characters feverishly trying to research this guy to find out where his horcrux might be, and one of them (probably ron) is like "wait. do you think... muggles might... have stories?"

Hush

and hermione is like !!!, stands up and runs straight to the closest muggle library

Hush

where they find out that in fact it was a badass couple of muggles who defeated him the first time around, bc fuck wizard supremacy

Ipecac

Entertainment definitely achieved. I figured it was probably Russian somewhere along the way just because of Baba Yaga. This would definitely be a solid adaptation and a really good lead in to a magical story.

Hush

the story of how harry realizes that working as an auror for the ministry of magic is actually kind of lame and he doesn't need the money anyway, he'd rather run around hunting dark wizards as a free agent

Hush

like, the potters were independently wealthy already and now he's also inherited the black family fortune from sirius. he doesn't have to work. and the ministry sucks, we all know this

And there it ends!

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Signal Boost: Velveteen Rabbi: Not the end of the story

2021-01-19T06:31:23Z

Velveteen Rabbi: Not the end of the story

In this week's Torah portion, Va'era, God hears the cries of the Israelites and promises to free us from bondage. But when Moshe comes to the children of Israel to tell them that, Torah says:

וְלֹ֤א שָֽׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה׃

They did not hear Moshe, because of kotzer ruach and hard servitude.

Rashi explains the phrase kotzer ruach by saying, "If one is in anguish his breath comes in short gasps and he cannot draw long breaths." For the Sforno, kotzer ruach means "it did not appear believable to their present state of mind, so that their heart could not assimilate such a promise."

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can't call this a signal boost because I don't want to boost it...

2021-01-15T06:02:50Z

Magen Cubed, Noted Witch King on Twitter:

(And I understand the argument that therapy simply exists to "make us good little workers in a capitalist society," but, you know sometimes it is good to talk to people about things and work through your own shit. And also I don't have a replacement for therapy soooo)

That's an argument that people make?

Dude.

That's the argument that I make at people when they're too depressed to value things like their own happiness and sense of self-worth. That's what I tell them when they tell me there's no point in getting treatment because they don't deserve to be happy, or because it will cost time and money and resources and they're not worth that, or--insert argument here. People go to therapy because it helps them be HAPPY. People go to therapy because it improves their relationships!

Which tankie made this argument, and how depressed were they at the time?

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Feeds Galore!

2021-01-13T00:02:22Z

I've gone a little crazy lately with making Dreamwidth feed accounts. I figure if this place is going to be my hub, I should move a lot of my reading here from elsewhere. So for the sake of any interested others, here's a list of the feeds I've moved over!

adamneely_yt_feed: A jazz musician and music educator with a tongue-in-cheek editing style, who talks about interesting new boundaries of music, coining new memes as he goes. His videos will be most interesting if you have a background in western music theory, but many of his best can be enjoyed by anyone. Some of my favorite low barrier to entry videos are "The Girl from Ipanema is a far weirder song than you thought", "The Worst Jazz Solo of All Time", "Why the Katy Perry/Flame lawsuit makes no sense", and "What is the slowest music humanly possible?" His channel is [here](https://www.youtube.com/c/AdamNeely/) if you prefer to subscribe directly.

ao3_news_feed: In this crowd this should really require no introduction, so hey, keep up with your favorite fanfic platform here on Dreamwidth!

askhistorians_feed: RSS feed for one of the best subreddits out there (imo), where you can find a fascinating array of historical questions given even more fascinating, long-form expert answers. Shout-out to their recommended reading list in the wiki.

derangedrhythms_feed: A Tumblr blog devoted to images and short snippets of poetry and prose with a particular feel. Best to take a look to see if it vibes with you. I find it a great place to find poetry I'd never heard of.

finr2_feed: Pro-expression, anti-thought crimes discussion as applied to fandom. Remarkably consistent and comfortingly logical. Companion to fiction_is_not_reality, where topics more likely to be censored by Tumblr are discussed. Fiction Is Not Reality 1, which was taken down by Tumblr, is hosted rather unsteadily [here](http://blog.finr.club/), and largely mirrored [on archive.org](http://blog.finr.club/).

floggingbabel_feed: The blog of unclassifiable-fantasy author Michael Swanwick.

maciej_ceglowski_feed: I can't take credit for creating this feed, but it's the blog of Maciej Cegłowski, of [Fan is a Tool-Using Animal](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/fan-tool-using-animal/) (warning for a banner of shirtless Spirk at the link) fame. Many interesting (though infrequent) thoughts to be had here, from one of the rare outsiders who seem to understand fandom.

mcmansionhell_feed: C'mon, it's McMansion Hell. It makes fun of terrible McMansions. Why aren't you subscribed already?

oglaf_comic_feed: The one, the only, the hilarious and usually not-worksafe... Oglaf comic! I suggest you make a NSFW [subscription filter](https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/subscriptions/filters) for this one and remove it from your default view, so that you don't accidentally see it when you shouldn't.

post_secret_feed: Remember Post Secret? Where people put their secrets in a handmade postcard and anonymously mailed it to this guy? Well, that's this. Shoutout to [the fandom version](https://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/profile).

reddit_politics_feed: The politics subreddit. You can't say they're unbiased, but you do get a lot of articles from a wide range of sources here.

snknews_feed: Attack on Titan-related news!

tarot_card_igans_feed: Tarot spreads, including meme spreads every Monday.

tarotgram_feed: Puns and general tarot stuff.

techdirt_feed: Tech news focused on moderation and anti-censorship. Home of [*Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act*](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml).

thetravelingwitch_feed: Witchy stuff.

wedistribute_rss_feed: News regarding federation and decentralized social media, e.g. mastodon, pleroma, or pixelfed.

wordpressnews_feed: If you host WordPress sites, you already know in your guilty heart that you should be following this.

the FAQ on feed accounts

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Signala Akcelo: La eta princo - Libroservo - uea.facila

2021-01-12T18:40:15Z

La eta princo - Libroservo - uea.facila

Do, ŝajnas ke tiu juvelo de la homa literaturo estas jam tre bone konata ĉie tra la mondo kaj ene de Esperantujo. Kial do, ĝi bezonas novan recenzon en ĉi tiu retejo?

Unue: Ĉar la libro estas tre taŭga por lernantoj. Ĝi ne estas tro longa, do oni povas legi kelkajn paĝojn ĉiutage. La ĉapitroj estas mallongegaj. Se oni preferas, eblas legi la tutan libron en unu aŭ du okazoj, kaj ne laciĝi pro troa legado. Kvankam la verko ne estas longa, ĝi enhavas plenan rakonton, kun komenco, disvolviĝo kaj fino.

Due: Ĉar la legado estas utila al ĉiaj legantoj. La pli spertaj ĝuos la ĉarman kaj preskaŭ poezian lingvaĵon; la malpli spertaj lernos multajn novajn vortojn kaj belajn esprimojn kaj vidos ekzemplojn de lerta uzo de la lingvo.

Trie: Ĉar la Esperanta eldono estas belege produktita, en tre altkvalita formo, kaj certe instigos al legado kaj eĉ relegado.

Ĉi tiu libro ankaŭ haveblas kiel e-libro, ligita ĉi tie.

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personal note

2021-01-11T08:53:15Z

My handwriting looks very similar to my mother's.

This is especially noticeable in the M's, which are almost identical, trending towards straight diagonals on the left and sloping concave curves on the right. That's not to say that or handwriting doesn't have differences: mine is overall taller than hers in most cases, inclined to print over cursive.

But it's strange: I never modeled my writing on hers, yet our writing is more similar than any of my siblings' is to either of us. If we were to subscribe to the idea of handwriting corresponding to personality, well--I don't speak to my mother, which for one reason is because of our dissimilarity.

I don't know what to make of it.

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Signal Boost: Vivian Onim on What Harry Potter subplot deadend do you wish JKR had concluded - Quora

2021-01-10T07:10:21Z

Vivian Onim's answer to What Harry Potter subplot dead end do you wish JKR had concluded in her books to your great irritation? - Quora

THE BRAIN SCARS OH MY GOD THOSE BLOODY BRAIN SCARS -

If there is a plot point that caused me endless frustration it's this one.

Picture it: our main characters break into a super-secret government facility, in which are contained Things That Mankind Was Not Meant To Know and lots of probably unethical experiments that may or may not involve human experimentation… after all, every government has skeletons in their closets, they just gotta find a big enough closet to hide'em.

Our brave - and stupid - heroes get inside, but to everyone's horror and nobody's surprise, the bad guys were waiting for them!

Begin chase scene and fighting, drama happens, the party starts dwindling -

Then suddenly, GASP...

(What a horrendously long title! It wouldn't even let me post at first. Anyway you should go read the answer, it's great. This is me using the Signal Boost bookmarklet btw, a nice little tool.)

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I'll admit it...

2020-12-23T06:24:17Z

...I have a problem: I'm spending far too much time on Artbreeder.

I can't help it! I keep fiddling with sliders, and it just keeps spitting out these faces that look like they could be actual people. Like, check out this girl! Where did she come from? I wasn't looking for her, but here she is!

Or this girl here, who looks strangely familiar:

Or Mr. Fascinating Coloration over here:

I also figured out that if you put the "face" slider all the way one direction and the "style" slider the other way, you can essentially copy skin/wrinkles/coloration onto another facial structure--which comes out especially cool with some of the more realistic skin tones. I ended up making an entire family of blue-eyed freckled redheads that way (down near the bottom of my profile), and several iterations of "smiling girl with tied back hair". (And their younger cousin, "young smiling girl with long hair".)

I spent a lot of time trying to fiddle around and make some characters I know--I started out with Historia (my fave from Attack on Titan), who actually wasn't that hard to get:

And then I spent a really excessive amount of time trying to create my CritRole-adjacent D&D character, Solène, an Aasimar sorcerer-cleric. She is supposed to have "coppery blond" hair in voluminous curls, speckled with so many freckles it looks like she got spattered with paint, and a general look as though she just came in out of the sun, even in winter. Well, the freckles aren't quite right, and I went back and forth on the exact hair color, but I settled on this for that little quirk in the corner of her mouth:

Now I've gotta stop myself before I try to create the whole Critical Role S1 cast...

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hushpiper @ 2020-11-23T18:45:00

2020-11-24T02:37:02Z

Mia nuna projekto estas–nu, estas unue krei personan e-libran bibliotekon, do mi havos multon por legi, sed estas due legi Hari Potter en Esperanto. Mi feliĉas kun mia nuna aranĝo, konsistanta el:

Mi kreis EPUB el la DOC-dosiero, kiun mi trovis (kie? Reddit? mi ne memoras); ĝi estas iomete malorda, sed servebla.

En la vorta-serĉa funkcio de Calibre, mi aldonis du fontojn:

– EO-EN Glosbe https://glosbe.com/eo/en/{word}

– Google Translate EO-EN https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=eo&tl=en&text={word}

Nun mi povas legi uzanta Calibre, kaj elstarigi tekston por ke mi povu vidi la tradukon laŭbezone. Mi povas fari ion similan per FBReader, sed ĝi estas iom malpli bona.

Pli malfrue, mi eksciis ke la vorta-serĉa funkcio funkcias je PDF-dosieroj krome, do la EPUB ne estas strikte necesa. Malgraŭe, ĝi estas utila havi, ĉar EPUB povas legi laŭte per parolsintezo–la Pola voĉo “Maja” de Ivona ŝajnas fari bonan laboron; dirinte tion, mia aŭskultada kapablo estas ne tre lerta, do ĝi povus esti aĉa kaj mi ne scius. Ivona por Android, jen:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker/comments/dnspl3/tts_ivona_tts_engine_collection_all_voices/

Mi poste parolos pri uzado de polaj parolsintezoj voĉoj por Esperanto.

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Dreamwidth post editing with StackEdit

2019-11-24T02:02:41Z

Dreamwidth is a great platform, but one of its biggest downsides is its post editor: it can be finicky, and it doesn’t allow you to save multiple drafts, making it difficult to write anything lengthy. You can use a text editor on your computer to draft the posts, but that chains you to a single device and can lead to lost drafts.

My answer to this issue is StackEdit, an in-browser markdown editor that can sync with Google Drive (or Dropbox) and exports to HTML that can be pasted directly into Dreamwidth. jesse_the_k has a great writeup on general markdown use for Dreamwidth here, but we’re going to take a slightly different tack: rather than using Dreamwidth’s built-in markdown capabilities, we’re going to use StackEdit to export to HTML that we can paste into Dreamwidth’s editor.

Getting Started

So to start with, get yourself over to https://stackedit.io/ and click “Start Writing”. Go through the tour if you like, give the welcome file a read. Summary of the most important stuff is this:

The bold/italics/etc buttons at the top work basically how you would expect; more detailed formatting is outlined in the welcome file.

Click the folder icon on the top left and you can create new files and folders, or delete or rename new ones.

Click the StackEdit icon at the top right, and you can sign in with your google account in order to sync everything in the cloud.¹

When you’ve finished making your post, click the StackEdit icon at the top right and click “Import/export” and then “Export as HTML”. In the box that pops up, select “Plain HTML” and then click “COPY” (not “OK”). That copies the HTML onto your clipboard.

Now! Go to your Dreamwidth and click “Post”. In the editor, click the “HTML” tab and paste. Then click “Preview” at the bottom to see what it’ll look like on your journal. Fill out the other post fields as you like and make changes as needed², and post. Voila!

^{1. If you choose not to sync with the cloud, all your files will be in your browser’s local storage. Don’t clear your cache, or you’ll lose it! ↩}

^{2. I suggest you stick to the HTML tab though: the rich text formatter has its own ideas of what HTML should look like, and it may quickly become unwieldy. If you need to do any major editing, I say head back to StackEdit for that. ↩}

Cloud Sync & Workspaces

I know Google’s walked their promise to not be evil way back, but signing in with a Google account is where the best features of StackEdit come into play–so I really do recommend it. To do that, click the StackEdit icon on the top right, click “Sign in with Google”, and do the whole sign-in thing–you know the drill.

That will immediately start syncing your files to your Google account, keeping them backed up and synced between devices. (Want to write on your phone? Just go to the site in your mobile browser and sign in, and all your files will be right there and ready to work on.³)

But there’s even greater rewards to be found in utilizing workspaces. Workspaces can be synced with specific Google Drive folders, making the files easy to access outside of StackEdit if you want to. They also allow an extra level of organization, as each workspace has its own set of files and folders.

Go to your Google Drive and create a folder for your workspace. I have a folder for each fandom that I do a significant amount of writing for. Make sure it has a unique name not used elsewhere in your drive, or you’ll have trouble later.

Add a Google Drive-backed workspace by going to the StackEdit menu, clicking “Workspaces”, then “Add a Google Drive workspace”.

Click “Choose folder” and select the folder you created in step 1, and then click “OK”. The choose folder dialog won’t show you your drive’s folder structure, only individual folders, which is why you need it to have a unique name.

Click “OK”. The new workspace will open up in a new tab, and StackEdit will set up shop in the folder, creating .stackedit-data and stackedit-trash folders for itself. Any new files and folders you create in StackEdit will be saved to this folder in markdown format.

^{3. I use mobile Firefox and have noticed issues with creating line breaks in StackEdit there. (Sketchy workaround is to keep at least one character in front of your cursor whenever you want to make a line break.) I don’t know whether that also happens in other mobile browsers, and haven’t bothered reporting the bug yet, but it’s worth noting.}

Other Notes

StackEdit can do almost all the editing you’ll need to do, but not, unfortunately, all. You’ll need the Dreamwidth editor to do Dreamwidth-specific things like tagging a user (like <user name="hushpiper">) since StackEdit won’t recognize that as valid HTML. It’ll just get stripped out.

However, any standard HTML is also valid markdown, so if you want to do something fancy that StackEdit doesn’t natively support but that can be accomplished with HTML, just write it out in HTML and it’ll be there in your export. Superscript is one example I used above.

StackEdit considers two line breaks to be equivalent to a <p> tag, which in my opinion is way too much space between paragraphs when translated onto Dreamwidth. I'm sure there's a good workaround so that it doesn't do this, so watch this space for updates.

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hushpiper @ 2019-06-02T19:03:00

2019-06-03T01:16:24Z

(This entry is in response to both a Tumblr ask and a followup anonymous comment here.)

Asked by Anonymous

Did Eren really mean it when he said to Levi Armin is different than him because he has dreams and all he had was killing the titans and revenge? I think he either didn’t understand himself or i didn’t understand him right

You’re referring to this page?

Eren: But that was a dream we had as little kids. I’d forgotten it a long time ago… All I had left in my head was hate… getting revenge for my mom… and killing the titans… He’s different, though. Fighting isn’t all he has. He dreams, too!!

I do think Eren meant that, yeah.

From a story perspective, I think that page is less about Eren than it is about Levi. The whole stretch from late-Uprising through Return To Shiganshina could in some ways be characterized as “Levi Has Thoughts: The Arc”. People say things, and we see that Levi hears and is thinking about them, but he keeps the actual contents of his thoughts private. But while Levi is that sequence’s main purpose, it does also say a lot about Eren, and about how Eren sees himself and Armin. I don’t think Eren is in any way duplicitous when he’s saying this: he is desperate, and entirely earnest. This is what Eren truly thinks.

And the thing is, the rest of the story supports it.

Before shipping out to Shiganshina^(c72), the trio discuss their future while Levi eavesdrops, and Mikasa asks whether they’ll be able to go back to the days when they were children. Eren’s answer is his typical combination of determination and anger, saying they’ll bring back what they can, and make them pay for the rest. It’s Armin who turns the gloomy tide of the conversation by telling them stories of the outside world, even calling Eren out for seeming doubtful–a moment so important that we see it twice, first in chapter 72, and then again in Levi’s flashback in 84.

On their way to Shiganshina, we get to see Eren recounting his memory of the first time Armin talked to him about going to the ocean, and how it affected him. The most striking thing there–other than how strong an effect Armin’s dream has had on Eren’s life–was that Eren never talked about it inspiring him to explore or see these things for himself; only about the realization that he had, when looking at Armin excited face just then, that he wasn’t free. He caught a glimpse something beautiful and reacted with anger.

In the battle at Shiganshina^(c81) we even get a direct contrast: we see Eren in flashback saying “When I think about getting my freedom back, I feel strength welling up inside of me,” followed by Armin in the present thinking back on Eren’s words and saying “When I think about the outside world, I feel courage welling up inside of me.”–and then a beautiful repeat of Armin waking Eren up as he did in Trost.

We get sequence after sequence painting this same picture, of Armin filled with awe and optimism, and Eren able to find nothing but anger in response–and by the end of Uprising, Eren is aware of the pattern. I was talking to a friend about this, and she said she thought the whole thing was deeply sad: Eren knows that the kinds of feelings he saw in Armin exist. He isn’t blind to them. And he knows that he doesn’t have them.

Eren sees Armin’s dream as a beautiful thing that he’ll never be able to fully experience, and when it comes down to life and death–and it does come down to life and death, not only in Shiganshina but all the way back in Trost, when Eren pulls Armin from the titan’s mouth–we’re shown that this is what he sees in Armin that’s so important to him that he’d rather die than see it go out of the world: Armin has a dream, where Eren doesn’t. Armin opened his eyes.

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PSA for those with depression

2019-05-29T22:43:09Z

Antidepressants are wonderful, life-saving medications. There’s a large range of them available to suit different specific brain chemistries. They can have un-fun but generally non-dangerous side effects, but if they are the thing you need then they can change your life. However, they have one really big downside: the condition they treat (unipolar depression) is difficult or sometimes impossible to distinguish from a condition that they can greatly exacerbate or outright trigger (bipolar depression), at serious and long-lasting cost to the patient.

Meanwhile lamotrigine is a cheap, safe mood stabilizer with one (1) major side effect (the possibility of a bad rash when beginning or raising the dose), which is very rare and goes away quickly if you stop or lower the dose.¹ It works really well for bipolar depression, fairly well for bipolar mania, and even works for some unipolar depression, BPD and PTSD. Its only downside is that it might not work for you.

For some godforsaken reason, despite all this, lamotrigine is not first-line treatment for depression. I find this scandalous and infuriating, especially given how awful mental health professionals generally are at recognizing bipolar disorder. So for you, dear reader at whom I have probably flung this article while screaming into a pillow, I provide a list of good times for a person with depression to consider bipolar meds and/or a bipolar spectrum diagnosis:

When going to the doctor for depression for the first time;

When going to the doctor for depression for the second time;

When considering taking an antidepressant;

When you haven’t tried lamotrigine yet;

When 3+ antidepressants have failed to fully address your depression;

When one or more antidepressants made your depression worse, or made you feel very anxious or agitated, or gave you insomnia;

When one more or antidepressants have worked well for your depression but then suddenly and mysteriously stopped working;

When your depression includes the type of anxiety characterized by general sense of itchy/skin-crawly bad vibrating energy, inability to sit still or pay attention, racing or circling negative thoughts, or irritable outbursts (this does not need to fit criteria for hypomania);

When your depression comes with intense insomnia or sleep schedule fuckery;

When your depression comes with very low energy, excessive sleep, and your mood responds to your environment (happy or exciting things make you temporarily happy or excited but the depression does not lift);

When your first depressive episode came early in your life (earlier than twenty-five, moreso if it was late teens or even younger);

When you find that when not depressed, you are somewhat more creative, sociable, or energetic than most people;

When you have had psychosis during depression, or post-partum depression;

When you HAVE RELATIVES WITH BIPOLAR LSKHDFSD

Signed,

Someone who is so, so fucking tired of constantly spotting bipolar spectrum disorders in people that their doctors have fucking missed.

¹It can also make your mood shoot up if you’re bipolar and currently cycling. (Though it could also just stop your cycling out the gate–that is more common, from what I know.) Once you’re up to the target dose (100-200mg) that goes away. If you’re bouncing off the walls in the meantime you can temporarily take some lithium to control it. On 25mg I went through about a week of intense hypomania that dropped like a stone the moment I bumped up to 50mg. Talk to your doc, but I recommend you bear through it.

²For more information on all of this, including copious links to studies and discussion from an experienced medical doctor, check out psycheducation.org.

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Asks Entry

2019-05-03T18:45:13Z

Asks on Tumblr were pretty great, imo--one of the better features of a bad platform, because it allowed lurkers and anonymous users to actually interact with fandom in a way that they wouldn't otherwise. So this is my attempt to reproduce that here: comments on this entry are screened, so comment here with your ask and I'll make an entry with my reply. Anons allowed and welcome.

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