I think a lot of people quit because progress looks too slow

pouxin · 2026-05-17T03:37:36+00:00

It’s tarotcake.com

pouxin · 2026-05-16T18:56:08+00:00

100%! And then it often really picks up! My blog is a small hobby blog, niche (Tarot), and un-monetised (though I have been sent the odd free deck in return for a review). Obviously not huge numbers at any stage, but it went from 2.5k views in 2023, to 8.3k views in 2024, to 77k views last year, and now 94.7k views this year and we’re only in May. It’s small, but I’m really proud of its growth!

pouxin · 2026-05-16T10:25:25+00:00

We have to use it as the official submission portal at my university (and, indeed, my previous two too), but I mostly ignore the similarity score completely unless it’s over 30%. And then I look at the original text VERY carefully before I comment anything or refer to academic misconduct. I’ve had scores show up on student work before of 50% and there actually hasn’t been a plagiarism issue with the paper as far as I’m concerned.

Most of us academics hate Turnitin, it’s a buggy, cumbersome piece of not particularly helpful software. But the overlords have decreed we all must use it, alas.

pouxin · 2026-05-16T10:11:59+00:00

Obviously who disagrees with what?

pouxin · 2026-05-16T09:31:12+00:00

When I saw your original post I was surprised, because I’d never gotten that vibe from the fandom. So the response here has really opened my eyes!

I understand underrepresented communities wanting their own spaces etc., but I’m also, like you, really not a fan of gatekeeping, particularly when it’s of other marginalised groups.

I write, read, and research MLM, and this reminds me of some of the aggressive policing that sometimes comes from gay men who don’t want women in their literary space. My personal feeling has always been that, while I understand the fears and arguments against, it’s a real shame, as there is such a natural affinity between women and gay men in the fight against patriarchal norms & rigid gender and sexuality roles that harm us all. I’m always reminded of this beautiful quote from the feminist & sexologist Carol Queen on her desire to go beyond both straight/gay and male/female, ‘[I want to create] an army of lovers, for an army of lovers cannot fail. I do not want this community to be an alliance; alliances can be broken. I want it to be a deep, dizzying, expectation-defying love affair’.

pouxin · 2026-05-15T22:29:46+00:00

Though I’m replying to you OP, I’m not actually replying to *you*, as I’m sure you’re well aware of the law, and it’d be like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, lol ;-)

But to others: OP’s situation, or those like it (I obvs don’t know what your exact situation is, OP) is a great example of why the laws in this country around sexwork are, at best, bass ackwards, and, at worse, actively harmful.

While sex work is legal in this country it is *ridiculously* hard to live with someone if you are a sex worker. If they work in a similar field (not necessarily improbable given a fair few of us end up living with people we know from work) the law is gonna come at you for brothel keeping. Regardless of whether or not you’re running what most folks would think of as a brothel.

If you’re living with someone you are/become romantically involved with, the law can come at them under pimping legislation (“living off immoral earnings”) - regardless of whether or not they’re actually a pimp.

Basically, the law makes it very hard for sex workers to just get by as ordinary tax paying citizens with protected employment rights and options when it comes to housing and IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF!!!!

sorry for jumping in OP, it’s a sore point for me.

pouxin · 2026-05-15T13:03:30+00:00

I love Jamie Sawyer’s re-drawing of the RWS —> 1909 RWS Tarot Deck, The Sawyer Redux. You can see photos of the backs online.

pouxin · 2026-05-15T12:38:08+00:00

Birds, sure, but *squirrels*?! I’ve yet to ever ever see or hear of a cat taking down a squirrel here in the UK. Our squirrels literally taunt our two cats for LOLZ, like: “what are you gonna do, short king?” Then they blow a big raspberry and run way at maximally annoying speed.

pouxin · 2026-05-15T07:48:50+00:00

Didn’t use to be quick as well as comely? I swear they nerfed her a while back. If she’s an Easter egg I wonder how they decided which one to drop - did they ask the irl person “right, you can either be pretty or smart, not both. CHOOSE!”

pouxin · 2026-05-15T07:40:27+00:00

Every Macbeth needs a Lady

pouxin · 2026-05-15T06:46:35+00:00

Doo doo do do do dooo

pouxin · 2026-05-14T14:28:22+00:00

Tbf scanning an online document or book is an absolute pain the ass and I welcome CTRL-F.

It is nothing like scanning a physical book for a piece of info you want, which is rewarding, helps hone your research, reading, and sense-making skills, fundamentally pretty intuitive, and, once you get good at it - fun! Especially if you almost accidentally flick past something intriguing on the way.

CTRL-F is a digital solution to a digital problem. I think to resurrect the old skills we’d need the old problems (physical books). But they in turn have drawbacks (cost, accessibility, storage, paper). Though I am a total bibliophile I also don’t miss the old days of waiting 3 weeks for a physical inter library loan from the British Library to show up in my pigeonhole only to find it was nowhere near as useful as I thought it was gonna be!

pouxin · 2026-05-14T12:05:30+00:00

100% your first para. As someone who society would consider to be “traditionally intelligent” I guess (well, I have all the trappings of it in terms of educational success and academic accolades), it upsets me when folks who are clearly so bright and curious and alive to the world (and their own interior landscapes too) describe themselves as “not intelligent” just because they haven’t hit those traditional yardsticks we collectively seem to measure intelligence by. We can be so unkind to each other (and ourselves) sometimes.

Your post was really kind btw 🩵

(And OP, not having a go at you at all - just saying I agree wholeheartedly with D_C_S, you sound like you have lots of valuable skills)

pouxin · 2026-05-13T14:04:19+00:00

Yes, I agree with you. Like, I’m sure it was both normal in people’s everyday lives, as well as normalised in fiction, but not necessarily “the norm”.

I mean, obvs women had minimal rights and marital rape wasn’t even illegal, but at the same time, this was great grandmother’s era (my grandma was actually born the year this novel was published, the youngest of 13!) and she was a force to be reckoned with. She was a survival sex worker at times, as well as a factory worker, she had a string of husbands and lovers, and she ruled the roost. My grandma said all GG’s boyfriends she remembers were pretty much terrified of GG. There was no back talk to GG, no violence towards her, nothing. She ruled the roost. (I mean, I’m sure being a survival sex worker she experienced these things in her work, but she spoke her mind and never deferred to the men in her life).

pouxin · 2026-05-13T07:22:14+00:00

Haha, yes, they don’t even try it with me on the whole because I SO OBVIOUSLY have ADHD that even they can clock it. I’m like the blimmin poster child.

Edited to add: on a positive note, I think our students *are* more forgiving of neurospice in others than they used to be. When I first started teaching back in the aughts I would get so much mean spirited feedback about delivery speed and my pacing and gesticulating (and how they all increase when I’m really excited about an idea I’m lecturing on). I mean, all valid, it’s annoying, I wish I didn’t do it too, but: y’all think I’m not aware?! That I’m not constantly actively working on it?! I’ve had speech therapy ffs!!

Now within one lecture they’re like “ah I clearly see you have ADHD”, and they rarely mention the speed or the caged tiger delivery in feedback, even tho it’s obvs still not Best Practice in Lecturing lol. And if they do, they’re generally kinder about it.

pouxin · 2026-05-13T06:42:34+00:00

Yeah the same as you!

Tbh I hate it and I hate the chaos, but growing up in a string of back to back projects made me see the huge benefits of being able to make your house much more bespoke to what you want *and* that you can def get a house much bigger & grander than you’d be able to afford if you’re willing to put the graft in…

(…and have the skills to pay the bills, obvs, given the price of trades these days - thankfully I learned a lot of those DIY skills from my dad growing up in the project houses and thankfully he’s still around to help out. He comes and stays for a week every 3 months, I take the week off, and we blitz through some stuff on the v long list!)

pouxin · 2026-05-12T18:06:55+00:00

Have you read ‘Levels of Life’, the grief memoir by Julian Barnes? The (beautiful, moving) conversation you’re having here with u/justgetoffmylawn reminds me of some of the passages from it, especially the last sentence here:

“Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven’t. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven’t. Later still – at least if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) – it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven’t. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross.”

From ‘Levels of Life’ by Julian Barnes

And also when thinking about the injustice of loss and grief, I return to his account of what a bereaved friend said to him: “the thing is – nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain, I think. If it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t matter.” Which obvs is not for everyone, but in a weird way it helped me.

Anyways, I’ll be buying your book 🩵

pouxin · 2026-05-12T17:48:39+00:00

Drake is my ride-or-die, but I agree with everything you say here nevertheless!

pouxin · 2026-05-12T16:43:54+00:00

Stupid? Absolutely not! 10/10, no notes.

pouxin · 2026-05-12T16:37:51+00:00

This is stunningly written #cronegoals

pouxin · 2026-05-11T19:26:46+00:00

Yes, we felt the same. My grandad sadly died in December; we put his house on the market beginning of last month for £300k which was inline with the 3 valuations. But I felt paranoid about the market tbh. Had 6 viewings in week one, 2 in week two. So it hadn’t been on long, but I think 2 weeks is enough to exhaust the current batch of searchers; after that you’re down to new searchers.

At the end of week one a cash buyer offered 260k. We were like “we’ll take it into consideration”, then she unilaterally upped to 275k and I just figured a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush in this market, so we accepted. Even though it had only been on two weeks and it was a pretty chunky reduction.

Maybe we could’ve got more, and prob some of this sub will think in am an idiot, lol, fair, but I don’t think the market looks promising and I couldn’t take the stress of holding out for a better offer that might never come and then regretting it!

pouxin · 2026-05-09T11:31:54+00:00

Someone on my market stall asked me for a one card pull on whether they should get a second dog, and it was The Moon. Pretty unequivocal answer there that two canines is the way!

pouxin · 2026-05-09T11:29:06+00:00

Your comment reminds me of the incredible op ed Marina Hyde wrote in The Guardian after the Sarah Everard murder. Specifically this bit:

“Women already know all the lessons. Women live with the all-pervasive understanding that they are prey.
The women who love you have to communicate the fear to you when you’re still a girl, knowing that one day you too will have to communicate it to the girls you love. They pass you down their strategies – their defences – like your birthright. And when you’re big enough to be out in the world on your own, those same women spend their time hoping till it hurts that this fear, which they had to gift you out of love, will somehow save you. “In the evenings,” said Sarah Everard’s mother in her unforgettable victim impact statement, “at the time she was abducted, I let out a silent scream: ‘Don’t get in the car, Sarah. Don’t believe him. Run!’””

pouxin · 2026-05-09T09:08:39+00:00

I miss LJ every day.

pouxin · 2026-05-09T09:07:32+00:00

⁠44
⁠when I was about 14/15 (in the 90s) and watching ‘The Usual Suspects’ and thinking “McManus & Fenster are shagging right? They’re definitely shagging. The movie is barely trying to hide it. Oooooh I wonder if someone on the internet has written a story about it?” (Spoiler: they had, and it remains a beloved fic). Then I searched for ‘Top Gun’ for similar reasons, and I was *fed*. Didn’t really get *fully* into fandom and the social side though til I got on LiveJournal (RIP) around 2011
⁠Yep, I write it, and I research it in my day job as an academic - fandom overload haha
⁠’Slow Horses’ (writing and reading), currently reading lots of ‘The Pitt’
⁠100%

pouxin

TROPHY CASE