Hello all, I’m Viridis. I do fanart and fanfic, mostly of Good Omens. I’ve collected my fanart below to make it a little easier to find in Tumblr’s searchless depths. You can find my fanfic on Ao3 as Rattatatosk. I also comment there as Lady_Viridis.
(Yes, I have several different usernames. It’s confusing, sorry. I’d change my tumblr but it’s 11 years old and I don’t want to break all the links. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Legitimate *pro bono legal services* don’t exist without a good reason. In a few of the exmormon groups I’m in you’ll see regular posts saying stuff like “Look what my lawyer sent me today!” with a pic of their resignation confirmation letter from the church.
You know. Just stuff that a normal average church that is definitely not actually a cult would do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🙄
As an ex-mormon, I’m gonna look the fuck into this. I want nothing to do with the church that shaped so much toxicity about my self image and my sexual orientation.
Not sure if any followers need this but if you do, here you go.
Everyone should be able to choose their religious beliefs and community, and leave any that they find does not work for them.
Ex mormon here - this guy’s legit. The Mormon holds your files for eternity, and when they find out that you’ve moved to a new area, they will send members and missionaries from that region to harass you. I know this sounds like dystopic bullshit, but they followed my father through three moves before he rejoined the church.
Also ex mormon here who used this. It’s a ridiculously helpful service that is incredibly easy to use. They keep you updated throughout the whole process, and it’s totally worth it since the church doesn’t get to keep all your private information and pass it around once you resign :)
Though this blog is mainly about Vikings in RPGs, history, and Norse Paganism, for anybody who may need this I Ieave it here for you because I never know what kinds of people follow my blog and all I care is that each and every one of you is safe and happy regardless of religion or lack of, if you choose. Be safe, and may whoever or whatever you believe in protect you in getting out of Mormanism.
A few years ago the church started requiring some people to get their resignation notarized (quit Mormon will still help walk you through that, it’s just an extra step you have to take when the process used to be incredibly simple). It doesn’t affect everyone and they tend to make men notarize more than they make wonen do it (gotta keep those priesthood holders in the church, y'know)
and also know that getting children under the age of 18 off church records is ridiculously difficult, the church’s lawyers kick and scream and drag their feet to keep them registered as members of the church. It’s like, sure at 8 years old this child was old enough to pledge ten percent of their income to you for the rest of their lives, but at 15 they’re not old enough to say “nah, I’m out”, it’s disgusting.
And one last thing, if you’re born into the church you don’t go on church records when you’re baptised at 8, you get put on church records after you get your baby blessing when you’re just a few weeks old. So if you have children and then leave the church, even the unbaptized ones will need to be removed from church records if they’ve been blessed. And blessed but unbaptized children are the most difficult to get off church records even though the child themselves have not made a conscious (if coerced) decision to join the church.
But y'know, totally not a cult.
[Image description: The image is a screenshot from a website. On the top half of the screen is a text saying “free legal assistance for anyone who wants to resign from the Mormon church”. The text is overlaid over a photo in mainly sot brown / orange tones of a road and some wild flowers. Right below it is a button named “Reisgn”. Below this is further text, black on white, titled “What is QuitMormon”, which says: Resigning from the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints can be a tedious and painful process. If you’ve decided that you no longer want to be a member of the church, resigning on your own can result in unwanted contact from church leaders and multiple requests before your resignation is finally processed. Our free service lets you avoid this process and provides privacy.
Actually, let me pre-empt my rant with (another rant):
It’s not that I mind if Crowley was an Archangel or Dominion or whatever before he Fell. I don’t think it makes that much difference. It could perhaps serve some narrative purpose but I don’t really see it.
To me, it makes no real sense for the story and I do see people using this idea so Crowley can be smarter, more powerful, more insightful, more aware and just you know, full of wisdom and knowledge that Aziraphale should have sat down and learned from a long time ago.
I want them to be two middling nobodies who overthrow the system because they came to love one another. It’s such a running theme in Terry Pratchett books too. It’s not the ministers and generals who overthrow governments, is it. It’s someone in the crowd asking questions, and another someone wanting a proper kiss and deciding they’d wage a war for it. That’s how revolutions start.
Had to emphasise this part, because this is not talked about enough! It’s never the ‘important’ and powerful people that go around making meaningful changes, it’s always the common every day people that change the course of history.
It’s such an important theme that I’d be shocked and disappointed if Crowley is suddenly revealed as someone much more powerful. They’re equals. That’s the whole fucking point.
the people on tiktok filming a blob-like strawberry and saying it’s a GMO one…fucking fake strawberry fans…they literally can grow naturally like this
it’s just the strawberries growing together. do not speak lies of these beautiful freaks ever again
every time I find a strawberry like this i’m not hating. i’m happy because there’s more strawberry to eat. unlike you
its called fasciation and it’s a mutation that happens in plants all the time! it’s perfectly natural, just a neat variation that comes from a wide array of genetic possibilities :)
Its so interesting that when people hear gmo they think its gotta look wrong but the real gmo plants are the ones that look perfect and plump everytime, that’s the kinda thing they’re selecting for
btw, selecting for traits is genetic modification. We’ve literally been doing it the entire time we’ve had agriculture. But now it has some scary name.
Good Reasons to be wary of SOME GMO plants: Allergy drift (Starlink soybeans have peanut genes and can trigger an allergic reaction in people with peanut allergies), Patent woes (We will sue any farmer whose crops have our designer genes even if they got them through wind pollination) and Unsound Field Praxis (We made this crop glyphosate resistant so we can drown the field in glyphosate because fuck the environment and fuck the workers who have to harvest this crop from farm to table)
(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)
I'm here with a vote of solidarity in the world of directness=bad tone. I seem to run headfirst into it left and right and am often so confused.
I figured I'd let you know how much I love your blog and your tone. So many of your posts have delighted me with reminders that history is written by biased people with a bias and that Ancient Egypt was pretty darn cool all on its own, no need to invent other things. And I love your depth of knowledge!!
Know that there's at least one person who'll thoroughly enjoy reading whatever info you'd like to dump onto this space, no matter how related or not it is to Egypt.
Thank you! I try my best to mitigate it, but y'know sometimes I’m just going to fall into that trap without knowing it and I wish people would be a little more forgiving.
I want people to see Ancient Egypt as it is, a wonderful and complex but deeply flawed civilisation, rather than the sanitised ‘they loved everything and worshipped animals and did all these weird things wow so kooky amirite?’ version that’s so often presented.
My main issue has always been getting past people’s instinct to react to new information with curiosity rather than outright rejecting it. I’d really like to cure the kneejerk 'well I read this book’ response to an Egyptologist saying 'yeah it doesn’t work like that’ because 99% of the time they last read that book when they were 7 years old and that book dressed up some weird hearsay as fact. And I get it. Ancient Egypt is the one everyone liked to read about as a kid, so they’ve got this idea stuck in their heads about it. You don’t get that for other areas of history quite so much. But then it becomes a nightmare for Egyptologists to do scicomm because all those people immediately think they know better than you. It’s like a weird switch gets thrown and you’re contantly battling the urge to say 'no, honey, please. I’m literally very educated in this and I promise you, I know more about this than you do.’ but you you don’t because that’s a dick move. I still think it every time though. I wish it happened less often because it wouldn’t be quite so difficult if people could accept that perhaps what they thought they knew was actually wrong. I mean you’ll accept it from some guy with a fast moving, wildly racist tiktok presentation, why not me?
I mean you’ll accept it from some guy with a fast moving, wildly racist tiktok presentation, why not me?
That’s the thing that gets to me when I do public history online. People do like being told that something they know is wrong, as long as it’s done in a very specific way - and I think it’s the tone of “you don’t know this thing that’s actually very exciting that’s been hidden from you! now that you know, you’re more informed than everyone else around you (and lots of scholars)!”
Thing most people think: Men’s suits have always been black, tan, or blue, I guess? Those are colors for men.
The truth: The association of different colors with masculinity has actually varied historically - although 18thc English culture felt that sober colors were more appropriate for men. By the 1780s-1790s there was almost a uniform for the fashionable Englishman consisting of a dark coat, plain waistcoat, and buff breeches. Men in Italy and Spain had a lot more leeway. There’s a lot to say about the French making an “Anglomania” fashion trend in the 1780s …
The “truth” that people find more appealing: Men used to wear all kinds of colors and be allowed to express themselves, but then Beau Brummell came along and FORCED them into a conformist box! Menswear has never recovered from what that bastard did!
or
Thing most people think: Medieval women didn’t work for money, they were supported by their husbands/fathers. And they weren’t allowed to because of misogyny.
The truth: Women did a lot of different things in the Middle Ages, including working for a wage or as artisans. However, their labor was often undervalued (if something was “women’s work” it made less money), frequently they were mixing domestic service with crafting according to what was needed, and female artisans often worked as part of a family workshop rather than being business owners.
The “truth” that people find more appealing: Spinning was necessary for weaving, so women who spun thread were actually raking it in! Men assumed they were poor and demeaned them by making “spinster” into an insult for unmarried women, but actually they were pulling the wool over men’s eyes while being comfortable and secure on their own!
people also just do not like it when there’s not a complex socio-political reason for everything. I run up against this a lot working with clothing history
what do you mean, panniers/hoop skirts weren’t intended to emphasize one’s Birthing HipsTM? what do you mean, the bustle wasn’t a legacy of the horrible treatment suffered by Sara Baartman? and men’s wigs weren’t popular due to shaving heads to get rid of lice? people just thought certain things looked cool because of the whims of human creativity? where’s the fun in that?!?!?!?!
Thank you for the confirmation on the bustle thing. I recently listened to a podcast on Sara Baartman (who I had not previously heard of) and they mentioned the bustle connection, and I went “hang on, Sara died in 1815 and bustles weren’t the dominant fashion until like the 1870s, over 50 years later. Seems highly unlikely that was the cause.” But I didn’t know enough to confirm or deny the connection.
