Tiernan 'doesn't do festive nicknames' Blanchard
@gaycannibalism.bsky.social
🔞 He/They/Xe. Dark fiction for the gays and the goths, horror and fantasy perfectly blended. Father of Malice and famed cannibal pervert. Regrettably British. 🔞
Proof of an aging audience who have no healthy relationship with mortality. As religion died 'health' became the new faith
December 9, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Proof of an aging audience who have no healthy relationship with mortality. As religion died 'health' became the new faith
The thing about TB is it works a little differently to most infections - a direct relative who got tb within 2 or 3 generations makes you more susceptible, not less, so I ended up having to have two tb jabs because the first didn't create enough antibodies. History of lung issues in the family, too!
December 9, 2025 at 9:23 PM
The thing about TB is it works a little differently to most infections - a direct relative who got tb within 2 or 3 generations makes you more susceptible, not less, so I ended up having to have two tb jabs because the first didn't create enough antibodies. History of lung issues in the family, too!
that's their tourism link, but there's so much stuff about them in black death history! They didn't know germ theory, but still quarantined.
December 9, 2025 at 9:00 PM
that's their tourism link, but there's so much stuff about them in black death history! They didn't know germ theory, but still quarantined.
Oh, that's wild! My grandma survived TB as a teen, and ended up nursing in a TB sanitarium when she became a nurse. She met my grandad there! Without TB I wouldn't exist.
December 9, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Oh, that's wild! My grandma survived TB as a teen, and ended up nursing in a TB sanitarium when she became a nurse. She met my grandad there! Without TB I wouldn't exist.
As a child I stood in one of those dips and had the strangest feeling, that realisation that a life was lived there, and ended there, and the person who lived and died had feelings just like me.
December 9, 2025 at 8:52 PM
As a child I stood in one of those dips and had the strangest feeling, that realisation that a life was lived there, and ended there, and the person who lived and died had feelings just like me.
There is not that far from me a plague town. It's a few walls from a church and a series of dips around that church of houses big enough to leave a physical memory on the landscap. Any hut style houses there is no evidence of. It was so destroyed by plague it was never lived in again.
December 9, 2025 at 8:51 PM
There is not that far from me a plague town. It's a few walls from a church and a series of dips around that church of houses big enough to leave a physical memory on the landscap. Any hut style houses there is no evidence of. It was so destroyed by plague it was never lived in again.
So much, and I dunno, I feel a weird comfort about that through knowing history some times. When cultures and governments are oppressive, people become insular and selfish. This isn't new. It's terrible it's happening again, but it's not new.
December 9, 2025 at 8:50 PM
So much, and I dunno, I feel a weird comfort about that through knowing history some times. When cultures and governments are oppressive, people become insular and selfish. This isn't new. It's terrible it's happening again, but it's not new.
Like, obviously, she was not mentally or emotionally well, but she ended up speaking about faith, suffering, and human nature in a way that lives long after her.
December 9, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Like, obviously, she was not mentally or emotionally well, but she ended up speaking about faith, suffering, and human nature in a way that lives long after her.
I'm just thinking about the black death, and those people who were one of a handful of survivors from their entire towns and villages, and how damaged they must have been. When people talk about generational trauma I think it must go back to when we first developed complex emotions.
December 9, 2025 at 8:46 PM
I'm just thinking about the black death, and those people who were one of a handful of survivors from their entire towns and villages, and how damaged they must have been. When people talk about generational trauma I think it must go back to when we first developed complex emotions.
Reading (and writing) poetry has vastly improved my prose writing.
December 9, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reading (and writing) poetry has vastly improved my prose writing.
No, I think that's fair, all psychology research I've seen says that empathy and understanding vicarious trauma gets more... distant the emotionally further away it is from us. So us, our family hurts so so, much. Our friends, very much. But someone halfway across the world? 'oh, that's awful'.
December 9, 2025 at 8:43 PM
No, I think that's fair, all psychology research I've seen says that empathy and understanding vicarious trauma gets more... distant the emotionally further away it is from us. So us, our family hurts so so, much. Our friends, very much. But someone halfway across the world? 'oh, that's awful'.
It's why my go to editing tip is to find where I'm shying away and make it worse, cut out justifying text
December 9, 2025 at 8:39 PM
It's why my go to editing tip is to find where I'm shying away and make it worse, cut out justifying text
And, there's nothing we can do about the ones that are already gone, and what we can do for the people still suffering that way is simply advocate for a better way. We can't live in grief. But I think we owe everyone who did suffer and does suffer the honestly of calling it suffering.
December 9, 2025 at 8:38 PM
And, there's nothing we can do about the ones that are already gone, and what we can do for the people still suffering that way is simply advocate for a better way. We can't live in grief. But I think we owe everyone who did suffer and does suffer the honestly of calling it suffering.
It's a really difficult thought, just like it's difficult to think that life is still like that for the majority of people outside of a well of comfort.
December 9, 2025 at 8:36 PM
It's a really difficult thought, just like it's difficult to think that life is still like that for the majority of people outside of a well of comfort.
Margerey's constant crying, which she describes as grief for the suffering of Jesus! I think in the modern age she'd be sectioned and medicated, but I don't think that's necessarily the right approach either.
December 9, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Margerey's constant crying, which she describes as grief for the suffering of Jesus! I think in the modern age she'd be sectioned and medicated, but I don't think that's necessarily the right approach either.
I've read both Kempe and Julian of Norwich, and various biographies of both, and I find their existence in the same rough time and place really interesting in a way I can't quite grasp. Two women finding their way out of the restrictions through revalatory visions, maybe?
December 9, 2025 at 8:32 PM
I've read both Kempe and Julian of Norwich, and various biographies of both, and I find their existence in the same rough time and place really interesting in a way I can't quite grasp. Two women finding their way out of the restrictions through revalatory visions, maybe?
It's fascinating to me that she spoke with Julian of Norwich, whose autobiography is even more veiled, but who also had fantastic visions maybe through illness/grief but took a completely different path
December 9, 2025 at 8:31 PM
It's fascinating to me that she spoke with Julian of Norwich, whose autobiography is even more veiled, but who also had fantastic visions maybe through illness/grief but took a completely different path
There wouldn't need to be folk stories about women who wept on their childrens graves so long the children came back to tell her her grief was preventing their rest if it wasn't common
December 9, 2025 at 8:30 PM
There wouldn't need to be folk stories about women who wept on their childrens graves so long the children came back to tell her her grief was preventing their rest if it wasn't common
My mum's a genealogist and the amount of whole family graves in various epidemics. Absolutely heartbreaking. I don't know, surviving art from this era is very clear the grief existed and was often overwhelming, why do we lie to ourselves about it?
December 9, 2025 at 8:28 PM
My mum's a genealogist and the amount of whole family graves in various epidemics. Absolutely heartbreaking. I don't know, surviving art from this era is very clear the grief existed and was often overwhelming, why do we lie to ourselves about it?
a lot of it must have been a sort of... resigned dissociation, right? Especially amongst those in the classes with limited power or control.
December 9, 2025 at 8:25 PM
a lot of it must have been a sort of... resigned dissociation, right? Especially amongst those in the classes with limited power or control.
Yeah, my feelings on her are very... she's not clear, but her first vision appears to have been nearly dying from one of her later childbirths. I can see why one of the things God told her would be to live sexlessly with her husband (who by all accounts she loved)
December 9, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Yeah, my feelings on her are very... she's not clear, but her first vision appears to have been nearly dying from one of her later childbirths. I can see why one of the things God told her would be to live sexlessly with her husband (who by all accounts she loved)