Intellectual labor is hard and humans don’t like doing difficult things, paired with a culture that’s increasingly hostile to education and a government that wants you ignorant- it’s easy to see how this happens in the US.

This is really heartening to see. Thanks for sharing it.

Thanks for responding, I appreciate it. What you’re saying makes sense.

When you say that about her being mentally ill with no empathy, what exactly do you mean? I’m asking because it’s easy to draw a lot of different conclusions from that statement, and I’m trying to make fewer assumptions when I don’t know people well.

It’s ultimately about the fact that no one in their life respects them. Do you really not remember being treated that way? Being disrespected on every basic level because of who you are? Don’t you remember how much it fucking grated on your nerves?

I grew up in the deep south, and it affected me deeply that everyone around me liked to use gay as a synonym for stupid, bad and especially defective. I remember how I just couldn’t take it anymore, to the point that I flipped out at one point in highschool and literally got up screaming in a class and flipped a table.

The constant, inescapable pressure is unbearable. It drives you nuts, to the extent that if it shows up when you think you’re around people who are cool with stuff it stings especially bad.

Ask yourself what matters to you more, honestly, do you care more about other queer people or you own feelings, because that’s what you’re asking other people to do as well. The pronouns thing isn’t a big deal for you, but hell, everyone’s got baggage. Everyone’s got things that set them off because of some fucked up shit in their past.

Because it’s kind of sickening to see a fellow queer person relishing seeing other queer people get the boot. I won’t lie, it makes me so angry and so sad.

Because no matter how much I may be annoyed by some sections of online queer spaces (I’ve been on Tumblr for a fucking decade and God I’m tired of it), I don’t want them to suffer. I want them to be okay, and I don’t think you actually want them to suffer either.

I think you’re angry and you feel rejected by people who should be understanding. We’re all freaks and weirdos to the outside world, we’re all used to being policed to the extent that we can barely breathe. Seeing it on the inside of the community must be really frustrating and blazingly painful. I’m sorry that this happened to you, I really am.

But I do want you to consider who you want to be, and what you want to care about here. I see someone spiralling and I want to let you know that it’s not to late to take a moment and reflect on where you want things to go.

You know, sometimes being a marginalized person with a modicum of awareness makes you feel like Cassandra- you just know what’s coming for your whole life, and the exact details may shift but the pattern is familiar, unsurprising and disappointing. I always knew that the christo-fascist take over of our government would be a lot of stupid, heinous shit, but I didn’t expect plague to feature so prominently. I’d honestly thought we were done with that particular horseman.

Thanks for sharing this. I always appreciate a well-cited piece of folklore, and especially since you went through the effort of translating it.

I especially enjoyed the calm familiarity of the priest. I’ve been reading up on renaissance magic and the presence of clergy is prominent, so it is personally amusing.

What an interesting and novel way of presenting this information. It’s interesting that the Will O’ Wisp stories all cluster, while the others are much more spread out.