blake kathryn
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Jules of Nature
Peter Solarz
if i look back, i am lost
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Product Placement
Cosmic Funnies
d e v o n
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titsay
One Nice Bug Per Day
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Acquired Stardust
Kaledo Art
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
No title available
Keni
occasionally subtle
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
seen from Malaysia
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@celith-wraine
Golden Billions, another conspiracy theory from the same people who gave the world the "Protocols of Zion". The Okhrana who became the Cheka, then the NKVD, then the KGB and now the FSB. The Russians have many dark talents and one of them is conspiracy theories.
Putin is the champion of the poor of the world - while starving them to death.
There comes a time when fandom becomes less of an escape from anxiety to being the source of anxiety. Sometimes I need to remind myself what’s important to focus on, and I made this chart to help me with that.
(Posting this at the request of a few people. The design/concept was inspired by an instagram post about covid-19 located here).
*Bonks you on the head with a paper towel tube*
@imhonestlyjustsoconfused
@crunchity-munchity
@manic-pixie-nightmare-enby
After seeing multiple creators having to publically out themselves or reveal past traumas in order to get fans to stop yelling at them for representing a certain minority/concept in fiction, can yall learn to take a second to consider how your words and actions affect others? Especially in fandom spaces? By demanding that people can only talk about certain issues if they’ve personally been affected by them, you are directly forcing people to reveal their trauma/minority status.
This was prompted by fans’ response to the latest episode of a TMA featuring substance abuse, but also remember a few months ago when Jameela Jamil was cast to play a queer woman in an upcoming movie and there was so much backlash that she had to come out as queer? That fucking sucked.
^^ and the same thing happened with Keiynan Lonsdale from Love, Simon?
#hot take–‘you’re not x so you can’t write x’ is bad praxis#if you can’t find something actually wrong with the actual portrayal#maybe take a step back and ask yourself if perhaps your trauma is getting in the way of you’re enjoyment of the media#which is a totally valid but SEPARATE issue from creators being bigoted (via @dinosaurrainbowstarfish)
I hate “If you’re not X/haven’t experienced X, you don’t get to write about X.” Partly because of this- it forces people to make their traumas and identities public knowledge- and partly because it honestly seems inclined to shut down empathy. “You haven’t experienced X yourself, so you are dramatically and irrevocably different from people who have, to the point where you’ll never be able to conceptualise X well enough to write about it non-offensively.”
Sorry, but that’s bullshit. To give an example I’m qualified to give- If a neurotypical person wanted to write about, say, an autistic person facing ableism, and put actual care and thought into it, that’s brilliant. Like, yes, please do this! Please try to understand and relate to us and think about how the world looks to us! Thank you for thinking our stories are worth portraying!
“You’re neurotypical, therefore you’re Not Allowed to write about an autistic character facing ableism”? Fuck off. That sounds like a good way to discourage people from writing autistic characters, for a start, while also entrenching the (already very prevalent) idea that we’re too other for non-autistic people to comprehend.
I wrote a book about an autistic character and was pressured to out myself. I’ve heard stories of authors being asked invasive personal questions about their sexuality or gender identity by agents who are deciding whether to take on their work.
The whole #ownvoices thing started as just a way to draw attention to existing marginalized authors, but once it became a trend and a “selling point” it really started to become harmful to those same authors.
To some degree, the identity of the author has always been treated as a commodity or a marketing tool in the publishing industry. But it’s gotten worse in recent years. And it’s hard to know how to fight it. I want a world where stories are judged on their own merits and not by which identity boxes the author can check, but it’s harder to create a viral hashtag campaign around that idea.
Hey. Hello.
I am monumentally tired of fighting. But I’m going to continue to do so for as long as I can.
Right now I am seeing long-time followers attack Kamala Harris and Joe Biden for picking her as a running mate. I know a lot of people look at this duo and see “more of the same.” I’ve seen so many intelligent people saying they are not going to vote.
It is absolutely critical that you vote the Biden/Harris ticket. I want you to remember that while you are pointing out the flaws, and here is why.
The current president is literally a fascist. He’s slow-burning, meaning he’s slowly moving the goalpost farther right. The only reason he’s slow-moving is because the Republican party still has the barest semblance of a conscience. Think of what would have happened if #45 said “we should delay the election!” and McConnell said “yeah okay that sounds cool.”
Do you know how terrifying that is? Because if he got congress to delay the election somehow, there would be no reason to ever have a federal election again. He could just keep delaying it forever.
“But CK,” you say. “The constitution says we can’t delay a presidential election!”
Checks and balances say a lot of things. Checks and balances say that bills are supposed to be voted on and go to the president for signing or veto. Currently McConnell has found a loophole and just has 400 bills sitting on his desk, ignored.
I want you to keep this in mind: Under fascism, the constitution does not matter. They will find a way around it. They’re trying to find ways around amendments, too, poking and prodding at free speech until they can find a way to shut it down.
And if #45 decides he doesn’t want to play anymore, he’s got a whole fucking army, and he’s just proven that the secret police he has in his employ will do whatever the fuck he says. I need you to recognized that this throwing people in Portland into vans thing wasn’t the ultimate violation of freedom. It was only one step in a massive authoritarian takeover. You cannot trust the secret police to do the right thing and say no. #45 has just proven they’ll listen to him like trained dogs.
He has already started talking about more terms. If he discards the constitution, there will be nothing stopping him from taking them. He’s currently, blatantly trying to rig a free and fair election. This has happened in other countries across the globe, and the same people who are posting “NEVER VOTE FOR BIDEN” are the same ones who post things like “JUSTICE FOR _______” when a despot steals an election.
If the incumbent president wins another term, this will be the last election we have. This will be it. This is how fascism works. This isn’t slippery-slope talk. This isn’t “potential worst case scenario.” We are in the middle of the worst case scenario now.
Please. For the sake of the millions of people who will die under #45. For the sake of people who cannot survive another 4+ years. Think of Biden/Harris as a road block. A barricade. Right in the middle of the road. It stops traffic and doesn’t do anything to get people where they’re going, but at least it stops them from careening off a bridge.
If you never want to have to make this choice again, you have to fight to abolish the US’s First-Past-The-Post voting system, but it is TOO LATE to do that now. No third party candidate can win. Study the election results from the last 40 years and you’ll see.
Please. Wise up. This is our last chance.
As someone who is in local leftist circles, I’m seeing a lot of people mocking “vote blue no matter who”. Lately, even comparing those people with the Back The Blue movement which sides with the police against protesters. They’re saying that if you insist people vote Democrat, you’re basically a boot licker. I’ve been hearing, “time to burn it all down”.
Mmkay. When?
When is your glorious revolution going to start? Please explain your plan to me. Explain how it will topple the current government. Explain how you will install something better in its place. Explain how the new government will legitimize itself and stay in power. Now, Explain how you will do this without killing millions of poor, disabled, and marginalized people.
Oh. You don’t have one of those plans? Then you have to deal with the government we actually have, not a fantasy version of it. You have to look at what you can realistically accomplish within the two party system that we have, not the fantasy multi-party system you want. You have to look at the REAL, ACTUAL candidates and say, “which one starts closer to my eventual goal, and which one can be moved by a sustained concerted effort?” And you have to say, “which one will kill the fewest people while we’re trying to fix the problems that gave us this system we hate in the first place?”
Because you cannot campaign for a ranked voting system in the eleventh hour. It’s too fucking late. That choice isn’t on the table for you anymore. Don’t whine and kick your feet and refuse to take the first step towards fixing things because that step isn’t big enough for you. There are hundreds of notches on the needle between Biden/Harris and all the things we want: racial Justice, indigenous land reparations, universal basic income, socialized medicine. Hundreds of notches. But if we cannot even agree to pull the needle ONE NOTCH FURTHER LEFT in unison, how the fuck are we supposed to get there? How do we ever reach a destination when half of us turn our noses up at a first step?
The Right got us here because they pull in unison. They’ve been doing it for decades and every election, the whole country slides. There are more of us but we refuse to work together. We refuse to just decide on a first step and take it. We refuse so hard we’d rather say “burn it down” than comprise our political purity. But I am here to tell you that no amount of philosophy is worth an ounce of praxis and your purity will not absolve you from the moral laziness of deciding your neighbors are acceptable sacrifices in the name of a brave new world.
Change requires realistic goals and sustained effort. It requires responsibility and involvement. It is measured in increments. It isn’t glorious.
“Burn it all down” only requires you to stand back and watch. So. I see y'all.
(via)
please stop reblogging sylvia plath poetry
For ppl asking why she’s an anti black, anti Semite. She has used the n word and compared her depression to the holocaust
Even not counting her poetry her private journals are full of disgusting, overblown antisemitism. She didn’t just use Jewish people for her metaphors, she outright hated them irl and yet decided to use their suffering for her own gain
here’s a source with some quotes
okay, I’m Jewish and I appreciate this sentiment. and if someone wants to cut out Sylvia Plath, go for it, I get it.
But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.
idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.
anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”
IMO, reblog Sylvia Plath all you want, just not unthinkingly.
I’m reblogging this now because I’m seeing anti-Virginia Woolf discourse lately due to the antisemitism in her journals and like… as a Jewish person who loves Virginia Woolf’s writing and an English teacher who knows that pretty much every writer of the classics is Problematic just…chill pls
The point isn’t to never consume media that isn’t ideologically pure. That’s never the point. Were that the goal, we would NEVER be able to consume any media. Nothing is ever ideologically pure, especially as time goes on and our social consciousness expands.
We should be telling people instead, “Be critical as you read this person’s work. They held bigoted views. Understand how that is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it. Be critical, be thoughtful”
Compelling others to not engage with something at ALL on ideological grounds is in the same vein as burning books. We should be compelling others to be critical and mindful, not narrow and willfully ignorant.
“Understand how it is reflected in their work, and be mindful of it.”
Wow Tumblr has finally grown up. Love to see it.
I knew this meme I made for a class would come in handy someday(I put it at the bottom of my final paper. Yeet.)
Problematic tumblr NEEDS a bullet to the back of the head end of story, I see all sort of bullshit that I know isn’t true or just someone’s inflated opinion who thinks their shit doesn’t stink , people need to think critically and purity culture also NEEDS a bullet to the back of the head, purity culture is just ignorance.
Repo Man
(1984)
This is cute 😻
(via)
Lana Beniko by AnnaHelme
baffling how much of this site is just conservative protestantism with a gay hat
you know what i’m in just enough of a bad mood that i’m ready to nail my grievances to the church door so let’s fucking go
black and white morality wherein anyone who doesn’t believe/think/live exactly as I do is a dirty sinner Problematic and probably a predatory monster
everyone is a sinner Problematic but true believers people who activist the right way according to my worldview are still better than everyone else, and I will act in accordance to this belief in my own superiority to let everyone else know I’m better than them because I found Jesus am the most woke
casual and fucking omnipresent equations of womanhood with softness/goodness/purity/nurturing to remind every woman who isn’t/doesn’t want to be any of those things that they’re doing it wrong
aggressive desexualization (particularly of women’s sexuality, to the point where it may as well not exist at all) accompanied by pastels [not a criticism directed ace ppl having a right to sex-free content and spaces but specifically targeted at a wider problem resulting from the previous point]
YOU’RE VALID AND JESUS LOVES YOU and neither of these platitudes achieves a goddamn thing
historical context is for people who care about nuance and we don’t have time for either (see: black and white morality)
lots of slogans and quotes and nice little soundbites to memorize but does anybody actually study the source material with a critical eye to make their own informed analysis
the answer is no
I’ve been to bible study groups don’t @ me I know what the fuck I’m talking about
Good Christians™ Nice Gays™ don’t fraternize with/let themselves be influenced by non-Christians those terrible queers
all the media one consumes must be ideologically pure or it will surely harm the children
it is Our Sacred Duty to protect the children from Everything, thus ensuring their innocence/purity/etc until such time as they are idk probably 25 years old
literally just “think of the children” moral panic y’all can fuckin miss me with that
people who don’t conform to the dominant thinking WILL be excommunicated/driven from the social group, and any wrong treatment they suffer will be seen as a justified consequence of their wrong thinking
I Saw Goody Proctor With The Devil And She Had A Bad Steven Universe Headcanon
Thank you for breaking it down like that because so many of us have been saying it but to see a play by play breakdown comparison is just…Thank you.
sipping tea and judging people as a group bonding activity
oh, man, speaking as a queer Christian who gets regular tumblr flashbacks to my childhood in the Bible Belt, YES
-belief that small snippets of text can be analyzed out context to understand the whole work/ judge the whole person -Desire for moral choices to be easy/ black-and-white leads to belief that it is possible to find a one-size-fits all answer to every situation -Literal, rather than literary analysis, with weird fixation on etymological roots that have nothing to do with source material -Belief that there is “one true interpretation” that is self-evident and will be understood by everyone encountering the same material regardless of background -Overwhelming, internalized sense of culpability for other people’s actions/integrity/souls -Overwhelming, internalized sense of personal guilt -Pressure to evangelize aggressively -Tendency to value broad ideals before individual needs -Hostility towards coexistence/tolerance/neutrality -Hostility towards lack of consensus in viewpoint -Knowledge as contamination -Guilt/contamination by proximity -Fixation on the sexual as uniquely dirty/sinful -Belief in “thought crimes” -Argumentation via appeal to higher authority/feelings of revulsion rather than internal, verbalizeable logic -“conversations” that are actually stealth soapboxes because one side isn’t actually interested in listening -“polite requests” that are actually commands because “no” is not considered an acceptable answer -in-group language -virtue-signaling and hostility towards the outgroup -gatekeeping -communities strongly built around the idea of being the world’s underdog -appropriation of other people’s persecution/victimization -treating the concept of oppression like a trophy -glorification/fetishization of victimhood
They Live Directed by John Carpenter (1988)
A public service announcement from the Empire’s Wrath…
Make Malgus proud. Get yours today Pineaberry.com.
Please reblog this if fanfiction has been beneficial to your mental health.
of course, my frustration with how The Left handles people trying to become informed about their ideas is partly motivated by fear. I swear being online is like I’ve been sent back in time to stop a disaster that’s already happened.
On some level y’all get that the far right extremists are good at recruiting and radicalizing, but generally speaking The Left curses at and attacks people who are trying to ask questions, constantly reiterates that its people’s own responsibility to be informed, repeats the exact kinds of propaganda right wing media spews out because they think the concept of Christians being oppressed or whatever is funny, encases all their discussions in jargon that is impossible to understand without context, refuses to define the jargon even as right-wing media “educates” them about its Real Meaning, and spreads the idea that having a discussion with anyone right of center morally taints you. A part of me is screaming internally every second I’m online because of this. If you think of this as a cultural and ideological battle of sorts, the Right is actively recruiting soldiers while the Left is busy chasing anyone who doesn’t already have military training, a uniform, and weapons away from their recruitment office (which is boarded up with signs saying that anyone who asks where they can join will be forcibly removed from the premises) with baseball bats.
Like we can debate “performing emotional labor” until the sun burns out and probably some good points will be made but at some point it’s gonna be either emotional labor or living under a fascist dictatorship because all the people it wasn’t our job to educate went out and finally educated themselves, just like we wanted them to, using their free Google...
...which showed them how to find nazis that would happily answer all of their questions, without cursing or implying that they should already know everything, and lots of free, non-paywalled, easy to read and jargonless articles about how it’s a minority’s fault that things suck.
If we’re fighting back we’ve got to fight to win. That’s it.
Please listen to me, a person who knows the American Christian Right inside and out.
The Right weaponizes our unwillingness to educate. When we scoff at a person that doesn’t understand what “white privilege” means, there are comforting voices that will be there to tell them that the Leftists are just people who have never suffered or hurt a day in their lives, that speak of “white privilege” because of their bitter hatred of anyone with differing opinions than they have. That person will return to the familiar narrative that the Left is filled with violent, hateful, destructive people that are both incapable of understanding their needs and struggles and completely indifferent to them. THIS IS HOW THEY WORK. The confrontational attitudes and confusing language are used as essential tools by the Right.
“I shouldn’t have to explain what privilege is!” we say.
“They respond that way because what they really mean is that they think no white person has really struggled or suffered,” other voices say. “They don’t care about you because you’re white. Isn’t that what real racism is?”
And that narrative makes sense to them because no, they don’t know what real racism is, because anyone who asks questions about what racism is is “sealioning,” and anyone who googles racism is probably met with the dictionary definition, and anyone who says “but this is what the dictionary definition of racism is?” is assumed to be acting in bad faith and probably cursed at.
I am not asking marginalized people to constantly be available to answer questions about their traumas and shit. I don’t want people to go through that. But as someone who’s extensively seen the inside of the group that elected trump, I am BEGGING people to understand what I’m saying and be as frightened of its implications as it deserves.
I don’t know!! If you’re white you have no excuse to not AT LEAST SOMETIMES perform racism-related “emotional labor,” start memorizing responses and spreading definitions and stuff!! Instead of “deconstructing our patriarchal colonialist capitalist mindset” or whatever, let’s deconstruct the long words we use to discuss literally everything for a hot second! I have answered very strange ignorant questions before and I will do it again! Because no matter how ignorant the question is, the person still went to ME. And I’m not throwing that away so they can look for answers on google and end up with the alt-righters on reddit in a place where they can educate instead.
I'm realising recently that one of the major reasons for this trend is that the web is fkin huge and people don't often venture very far beyond their own circles. Which means that within a circle and just at its outskirts, the questions and arguments people make have honestly been addressed and re-addressed so many fkin times that it really is just "oh my god ugh" when there's another one who's missed all of those learning times. And it seems like it's out there and it's obvious and why do I need to be doing this again when it's right there. Except that it's only really right there from a specific spot.
So, in conclusion, I think we need a FAQ to redirect people to.
The left needs an on-ramp which incrementally builds up all of its concepts. It has to start from common sense and truths that are obvious to someone not on the left and get from there to the insights the left has to offer in ways that most non-lefties can find intuitively logical.
Most people on the left can't actually offer that. They are too far removed from the actual philosophical justification of their views. Too willfully unable to put themselves into the perspective of the right. Too uncritical of the left's ideas. You can't lead people who don't already mostly agree to your perspectives from that position.
To be fair, some of the left's progress in the culture has been due to reliance on the mechanisms of offendedness, outrage, and ostracism. But the success this achieves is hollow. It gets you disagreement becoming resentfully hidden rather than disagreement becoming agreement.
There was a time when this "get offended and ostracize" strategy was more common among the right. Sociological pendulums and all that. It is a strategy you do when you have the power to shut people up and the privilege to get away with being an ass about it.
(Contrary to the Abridged Lefty Theory for Children most people get from Tumblr or Twitter or wherever, power and privilege are not the same across a society - power and privilege constantly change depending on where you are and who you are with, both in meatspace and online.)
But it is a toxic strategy regardless of who does it, with a high risk of being more harmful than helpful in ways that are not immediately obvious. And it becomes more harmful the more progress and success you achieve.
So, let’s get started. What are the essential words and phrases that need to be defined in order to start the conversation? I’m serious. Let’s start a dictionary.
# dictionary of the American Left
Let’s start with what privilege is—not just white privilege or male privilege but privilege generally speaking. There has been discussion about what that is, but still I’ve seen widespread misunderstanding among republicans or similar about what is meant when people say it. And that means that people are REALLY DEFENSIVE when talking about it—they feel like their lives and their personal struggles are being attacked when someone says “privilege.”
I really think the misunderstanding is partly because of “white privilege” being defined apart from the context of what privilege is. Because people on the right don’t really consciously think of the world as consisting of systems of oppression. So even the best attempt to define “white privilege” is going to fall a little short.
I had to learn this—to check myself a bit, and realize that I sounded super condescending when I talked about privilege to people who were first generation college students and abuse survivors or who had grown up poor or who had been in the foster system, et cetera.
Here’s where I think you’d start—start a discussion about fairness. Because fairness isn’t a loaded word in the same way that “privilege” is. Privilege is often seen as very presumptive just because people don’t really know what you mean by that. The first question is, “Well, does the world treat people and judge people fairly, or are there ways in which it’s unfair?”
And it’s very hard not to see that the world is unfair. A person who is born rich has a lot of advantages over someone who is born poor. Someone who has loving, supportive parents has a better chance at being brought up in a way where they can succeed than someone who never had good parental figures. Metaphors about privilege don’t get through to these people because they don’t explain why they apply to the real world. A metaphor about a fence or running a race is just a metaphor. Talk to them (if you’re comfortable with it) about times when you have experienced unfair treatment, or get them to share their own experiences.
The problem you will run into is that people will not see these things as systemic, because the idea of systemic injustice is probably kind of foreign to them. They get really tripped up on the idea that someone can participate in an unjust system without themselves doing unjust things because they already read everything related to these discussions as aggressive and blamey. They probably don’t see examples of racism or sexism as a fundamentally ingrained part of society—they’re the actions of individuals who are wrong, yes, but people tend to see them as isolated incidents.
So provide examples. Lots of examples. Don’t just talk about one axis of oppression (and don’t say axis of oppression because they don’t really know what that means). DO NOT, by any means, assume they have the historical context for these things...because they don’t. American public school history education is propaganda. Have reliable sources on hand for the history of racism and sexism and other prejudices in America because people usually don’t know there has been, for example, really any legal/institutional aspect to racism since the 60’s. American history textbooks stop talking about racism with MLK. Talk about the history. Talk so much about the history. Almost everything I know that convinced me racism was still a real and important threat ingrained into our society I had to research outside of textbooks.
Talk about how the assholes that anyone could identify as racist don’t just “end up” racist. Why are they racist? Maybe they grew up hearing that kind of stuff as a kid. Well, racism being basically normal in a whole group or community is an example of something bigger than individual choices that causes racism. “A person is this way because their parents raised them like that” is the simplest and most accessible way to introduce the idea of actions and beliefs being part of a system.
Don’t talk about privilege about being just in terms of gender or race. Talk about class privilege. Talk about privilege as broad and flexible and a thing that doesn’t fully 100% define an individual person, because “White privilege” refers to something that exists in a whole society, not just “you, a white individual, are privileged for being white, regardless of your individual experiences, and you never struggled.” It’s not an attack and it’s not meant to be a way of broadly simplifying a group’s experiences. The necessity of explaining this isn’t all because of “white fragility,” it’s definitely at least partly because they’ve probably heard very inflammatory and dishonest things about what the Left means by privilege and that has to be dealt with. There is a lot of prejudice and bigotry in our history and there are still ways of thinking and laws and structures that don’t treat people fairly because of qualities they can’t help. And we want to make the world more fair. If they shut down, go back to that—it’s about treating people with fairness.
to check myself a bit, and realize that I sounded super condescending when I talked about privilege to people who were first generation college students and abuse survivors or who had grown up poor or who had been in the foster system, et cetera.
So much this. And while you're at it? Be aware of what privilege you may have in the convo including that which may be invisible to you. Because you don't know someone's history. You don't KNOW if they're an abuse survivor, or a survivor of extreme poverty; you don't know their disability status. (Hell THEY may not know how ablism is affecting their life.) Unless you know someone VERY WELL INDEED these things WILL be invisible to you. Which means you may well be acting your own privilege out, without noticing it - and yes, you may well have some at play. And the far right absolutely exploits that hypocrisy, too.
Somebody’s grandma is sick of the bullshit lol
