People love to say things like “Hiding Anne Frank was illegal, turning her in would have been legal” without like fully grasping the modern implications properly. You have tons of folks like “if WW2 happened today id have __” that do not realize what is happening around them.
We have this idolized AND sanitized version of what happened then, and so we do not recognize it when it happens now.
Resistance fighters assassinated nazis and blew up weapons and infrastructure and destroyed records and forged paperwork and raised secret funds and smuggled people in vehicles and yes, hid them in their homes.
“Well it’s sad he got sent to an ICE camp but he faked his permit :/“
Whoever helped him fake his paperwork did what fighters in ww2 did. People who cut through chain link fences do what fighters in ww2 did, people who blow whistles chasing after ice cars do what fighters in ww2 did, people who destroy arms factories and cop city cranes do what fighters in ww2 did, people unmask agents do what fighters in ww2 did.
People are doing it now! They’ve been doing it now! You keep saying “oh if this happened here__” it HAS! It IS!
What are you doing about it?
As someone on the front lines of the court system, I’m confirming this. It’s easy to assume that people are being hyperbolic. They’re not. People in the courthouse for speeding tickets and child support are being strongarmed into locked rooms and arrested, loaded into vans under tents behind the courthouse, and they built a fence with netting over it to prevent reporters and court watchers from photographing faces.
One local jail contracted with ICE voluntarily. We were getting close to forcing them to actually follow the rules of ICE detainers and release people if ICE hadn’t come for them. That’s over now. If anyone gets bond on a pending criminal charge, they are arrested and deported without the chance to prove innocence or guilt.
Two of my clients were victims of severe domestic violence. Nearly all have dependent children. Some of the children are US citizens. There are no questions. No support. Give your kids to CPS — this is the only option.
You know undocumented people can get a driver’s license? They can file taxes and get a tax ID? Those, the ones who tried to obey the law, are being taken out one by one, because their names are in a database that they voluntarily joined. Because they want to be here. They want to be Americans.
The judge in a case of mine gave someone a two-day jail sentence. Gone. Case deferrals for dismissal are available for all Americans; if an undocumented person tries to take the same deal, they’re gone. A child client of mine had his father disappear to ICE. A woman had her husband disappear.
It’s now. Detainees kept in horrible conditions, unfed, unwashed, no lawyers, no doctors. It’s now. Shipped to countries where they’ve never been and left without papers. It’s now. It’s now. It’s happening now. It’s happening now.
The implication of Victor being an undergrad in the novel is incredibly funny because, yes, it explains so much of his behavior and audacity, but it also means Victor’s apartment could’ve been some sort of student housing, which means there were other undergrads living there, too.
Which means when Victor wakes up to the Creature standing by his bed like ☺️, and Victor freaks out and runs away, the Creature could have ostensibly wandered into the hallway after him, only to be met with a pack of incredibly drunk-after-an-all-night-1818-rager yet well-meaning frat boys.
Who were so blasted that they were just like, “Dude, what, do you play rugby? Holy shit, he’s fuckin’ huge, look at this fuckin’ guy! Absolute unit!” And they all whooped and hollered and just ushered the Creature into their dorm to keep the party going.
And the Creature was just like, “?????” but very pleased to find other people vaguely shaped like him, so he lets them because he may be just minutes old but he knew early on all he really wanted was one (1) buddy and now there’s, like, a herd of them and they’re all having a blast.
When the guys inevitably pass out, sloshed beyond all sense, he just sits and waits for them to wake up and when they do, later that morning, he’s poking at one of them to make sure the guy is still breathing, and the kid wakes up and yells for a second and squints at the 8 foot-tall (rugby???? player????) guy in their dorm and is like, “Shit, what is that?”
And another one squints at him and goes, “I don’t fuckin’ know, bro, but he can throw us so hard. Did you see how David just…fuckin’…flew out the window last night? Just hurled David like it was no big deal. That was awesome.”
David groans and puts his head under his pillow because his headache is awful but he lets out a pained, muffled, “that was awesome” in agreement.
So in a rare case of wholesome frat boy camaraderie, this herd of college roommate boys, all of whom are dumb as rocks but well-meaning, just take the Creature in because, “There’s this huge fucking monster guy and it’s the coolest thing we’ve ever seen.”
This would possibly mean the Creature is socialized to be a dumb-as-rocks frat boy, but because I cannot allow that to happen and because there is no universe in which he would not be into poetry, he somehow also gets socialized by liberal arts majors and is just as Sensitive™, it rubs off on his frat buddies, who start saying things like, “No, man, it’s Sturm und Drang, it’s, like, the fuckin’ vast rolling of the soul that, like…fuckin’ eschews Enlightenment rationalism.”
But some of the boys’ lingo inevitably rubs off on the Creature so when, months later, Victor comes back to get all of his things with Henry post-mental breakdown, he bumps into a crowd of rowdy guys playfully jostling each other, and that crowd includes an 8-foot tall dude in a letterman jacket holding a volume of Goethe in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other, and he scoffs down at Victor and goes, “Accursed Creator! Why didst thou abandon me in my hour of need? Fuckin’ lame.”
And all his buddies go, “Yoooooo!” and high five.
The Creature in class getting perfect grades as his frat boy besties cheer him on:
THIS!!! @thewhiitelotus ! This is the thing! Look me in the eye and tell me ANY undergrad wouldn’t be stoked beyond belief to befriend an immortal promethean monster. “He’s like a mini kaiju, he’s like the fuckin’ Hulk, he can recite the entirety of Paradise Lost by heart, he rules.”
I would like to add: Victor’s professors - who he argued were wrong and knew less than him - would probably find out about the mad-science-project-turned-student (attending on Victor’s student payments?).
They would almost certainly like him better. Not because they’re okay with an amalgam of human corpses brought to life by unholy means, but because having an undergrad try to tell you that they know your own subject of expertise better than you is fucking insufferable.
And since Victor was very clearly not following proper lab procedures or the scientific method, there is no proof that Victor is responsible for this. Could have been a fluke. Or God. Or someone else’s inappropriate science project. Annoying flunkers who think they know better than the teachers get no extra credit for creatures they can’t prove they created. Also, Mr Frankenstein? You’re …son? Is a much better student than you were.
Reblogging with a link to the artist, Emily K., who’s based in Philly and is firmly anti-AI! You can print this piece (and some others) for free for use at protests and such!
To the question “what do I gift someone who already has everything”, I find that recalling good memories is usually a safe bet :) So I decided to make this very special edition of “Arsène Lupin: Gentleman-Cambrioleur” to gift my dad for Christmas, as Lupin was one of his childhood heroes.
The text is the original French version from the first edition (retrieved from Project Gutemberg), which I typeset to include images from other editions of the book, as well as several illustrations made throughout the decades. The typeset style was inspired by a previous typeset made by cArt (which I found via the Renegade Bindery server), with permission.
For the cover, I kept the Art Deco style of the typeset and actually managed to hand paint the whole thing, for which I’m so so proud! 🥰 (I was always a mess with drawing and painting, but turns out that transfer paper can be your friend!)
I was also very lucky to find this fake leather that took the ink so well!
I had to brush up on my French to understand different parts of the text for typesetting (such as letters, newspaper articles), but in the end it turned out as one of my top 3 binds of the year.
Technical thingies:
Typeset on Microsoft Word, with a style adapted from a typeset by cArt (let me know if you want to know about the fonts used). Text is public domain from Project Gutemberg.
Printed on Clairefontaine Trophée paper, 120gsm, cream color. Long-grain A4.
Quarto bind, sewn on tapes with French link stitch.
Fake black leather, non-backed, for the cover
Cover decor: hand painted with gold fabric paint
Endpapers: Pepin’s gift/creative paper, Belle Epoque collection
North of North is about a young Inuk woman who gets sick of her narcissistic husband’s macho BS and moves in with her single mom. that… probably makes it sound like one of those shows, doesn’t it.
well, maybe it is, maybe it’s not (it’s not). while Siaja (Anna Lambe, gorgeous, absolutely stunning) runs around trying to put her life back together and find herself (but first find and hold down a job and learn to coparent with her almost-ex - yeah of course she has a kid, she’s 26!), there is life happening all over place in the tiny Nunavut town. Ice Cove is the kind of tight-knit community where your people won’t leave you alone - but they also won’t leave you alone, you know?
the show doesn’t preach, but while you’re laughing, it still quietly, casually shows you how colonialism doesn’t really end.
how it lingers.
here’s your white mayor. here’s your language being slowly forgotten and now you need a translator to understand your elders. here’s your town’s lack of funding and what it gets it has to fight for (and how do you fight for it when there’s another town (the Shelbyville to your Springfield, the Woodbury to your Stars Hollow) that even has a sushi place?). here’s a French Canadian man who calls you Snocahontas. here’s your mother’s self-sabotaging old trauma.
*sigh* fine, there’s also walrus dick baseball. if anything, watch it for the walrus dick baseball
ALT
