freyaishtar

[freyaishtar]

rereading my own writing is just a constant fluctuation between "damn, girl, you wrote this? (affectionate)" and "damn, girl, you wrote this? (derogatory)"

[freyaishtar]

Let’s get this out of the way:

Yes, I’m of Ukrainian descent. Yes, I have many difficult feelings on what’s happening right now. No, I’m not open to discussion about it. Portraying Dolohov as Ukrainian instead Russian in my upcoming vampire fic is coincidence, not any sort of social/political commentary.

[freyaishtar]

“blocking people because they annoy you is ridiculous” you do know what the block button is for, right? You do realize this is social media, right? You do realize that blocking someone isn’t sentencing them to death, right?

Block literally anyone and everyone you want for any reason you want. If you want to block everyone who has a blue icon do it. If you want to block people who have the same name as you do it. If you want to block everyone who annoys you do it. That’s literally what it’s for. Block me if you want. It’s your social media. The point of social media is to have fun and if people are annoying you then block them. You have absolutely zero obligation to interact with anyone on social media, ever.

You know what happens if you don’t immediately block people who annoy you? They keep coming back and keep annoying you. So just skip over that hassle and block them immediately :)

I have blocked people for having boring headcanons about Pokemon. You think I’m not gonna block you for coming into my inbox and being annoying? Lol. Have fun with that. 

[freyaishtar]

So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us. 

Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs. 

Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.

We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).  My point is, for millenia, we loved pigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.

It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining our cities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.  

I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is

[freyaishtar]

people who comment on fics just to say that they are re-reading and still cried/felt emotions/loved it are the greatest people on earth and should be given a thousand dollars. 

[freyaishtar]

The name is probably just a coincidence, but are you by any chance the same Ishtar who did the absolutely awesome, but sadly abandoned, HP / Addams Family crossover fic "Family Values"? I discovered it last night by chance, loved it, and cried when I saw it had last been updated in 2008 ON A CLIFFHANGER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. Anyway, that you?

����No, that is not me. I’ve been Freya Ishtar, and only Freya Ishtar, since I started in the fanfic community back in 2006. The fandoms I’ve been part of since then have been [in order] Naruto, Xiaolin Showdown, Inuyasha, Teen Wolf, Harry Potter, Marvel, OUaT, The Witcher, Twilight, and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. I’ve never once written anything for Addams Family, and, for the record, the longest I’ve left a fic un-updated is a year? I don’t leave fics posted that I know in my heart probably won’t be completed, so if I have a fic posted, but it hasn’t been updated in a while, that just means it’s been a while since I got to it for whatever reasons. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[freyaishtar]

Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)

[freyaishtar]

Hi! I don't know if you've posted about it already, but I've just started reading Heathens, loving it so much! Was wondering who you would fan cast for the characters?

Thanks so much!

Wow, I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this (I have a serious issue with forgetting about half my social media apps about 75% of the time).

Fancasts are a funny thing to me. Like, I remember (cue “It’s been 84 years” gif from Titanic) before they started, and then I recall one day someone asking “who’s your fancast for Tom in this fic?” And I was like “my what? 😳” and it was explained to me. After that, I kept getting questions about it, so for the longest time, I would post my fancasts at the top of my fics in my first chapter authors notes. Somehow, even if I posted a reminder of ‘this is not a mandate of how the reader must see the character, imagine whomever you like ‘ or that I only posted it because I was asked so often, I would get responses like “oh, well, I see so-and-so!” as though a reader were personally offended I didn’t share their view on a particular role. Or I would receive comments/reviews flat out telling me I was wrong, because this character could only be portrayed by this actor/model/whomever. Kinda got exhausting, so I’ve been slowly going about stripping the fancast info from my A/Ns because it’s not worth it. BUT, since you asked: Jason Momoa as Fenrir, Brock O’Hurn as Orias Mulciber, Alexander Skarsgard as Lucius, Charlize Theron is my Narcissa, Michiel Huisman as Antonin…. And everyone else i see played by their film canon actors 🤷🏼‍♀️

[freyaishtar]

43. Talk about a positive experience with fanfiction or the fanfiction community that you will always remember.

I've made two of my very best friends through the fanfiction community. @canimallow and @freyaishtar and I all talk every day and have done for nigh on 5 years, despite living scattered across the globe. I'd be lost without them, and never would have met them if not for fanfiction.

[freyaishtar]

[freyaishtar]

Simone Biles is a wonder, and I trust & support her to make the best decisions regarding her health. If that means stepping down from competition, then all the more power to her.

She is not a show horse, she is a person who deserves happiness, recovery, and privacy during this time. I am proud of her for putting herself first.

[freyaishtar]

Lemme just *blob* for u 

(Source)

[freyaishtar]

Here’s to the fanfic writers who can only write sporadically.

Here’s the writers who can’t output enough to keep up with the most popular writers.

Here’s to the writers writing even though they get no feedback.

Here’s to the writers who somehow manage to scrape together a little inspiration and a lot of hard work to write that story they know nearly no one will read.

Here’s to the creators who keep going even when it’ feels like screaming into an empty void.

You’re inspiration, and I don’t know how you do it.

[freyaishtar]

Modern fandom went awry when people stopped learning how to avoid content that upsets them and instead starting actively seeking it out.

I mean this in the kindest, most loving way possible, but babes you'll be so much happy when you stop focusing on what other people are doing and instead focus on what you like.

You'll never be able to stop people from liking what you hate, and the best way you'll find any peace of mind is properly utilizing blocking, blacklisting, and muting tools. Take it from someone who used to run a shipping discourse blog, fandom is supposed to be what you enjoy, stop focusing on things that upset you.

[freyaishtar]

hey! do you plan to continue your “under the blood red moon” fic? i just found it and loved it, finally a good story for such a rare yet awesome pair 🥰🥰

Absolutely! It’s just that fic, because it is so much more reliant on the content of the books (at least for these formative chapters), it’s a lot more involved of a process just to get one chapter out (I have to sit there with the book open, and my laptop, and a notebook to keep tabs on everything I need to use/change… it’s a whole thing). So while I definitely plan on continuing it, I may not get to until September when my kids are back in school and I have hours of free time during the weekdays to work on my fics again (after everyone being home since March 2020, I’m looking forward to this September so hard, I could cry🤷🏼‍♀️).

[freyaishtar]

Revenir is like, my favorite fic ever! I love it SO much, and James being kept as a prisoner by Yaxley is such a unique plot

Thank you so much, you’re very sweet 🥰 I wanted a way that he would be able to “come back” in the present of the Second War without any kind of complicated magic, and also that wouldn’t have meant him just having walked away from his son & his friends and then popping up 18 years later, like, “what’d I miss?”

[freyaishtar]

So is reblog is also not permitted?

That’s the difference. Reblogs are good! You promote the artist and their work.

At least for me repost is ok only in one condition: you asked permission and the artist said “yes”.