✿ rose hips ✿

rose // 20 // she/her if i could begin to be half of what you think of me i could do about anything i could even learn how to love like you

[trashcannie]

if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in the midwest, this is it. 

[jasperzilla]

You missed some of the best ones

[dragonastra]

the best part about it is that the art installation isn’t actually called the Bean. It’s called Cloud Gate, and artist Anish Kapoor (yes, THAT Anish Kapoor) hates that we call it the Bean.

But i mean, look at it. It’s a bean.

[vashthestampedee]

How could you forget this one though

[akamine-chan]

I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA THAT THE BEAN WAS CREATED BY ANISH KAPOOR.

[solongstarbird]

someone help me why is anish kapoor important what did he do?

[gay-jesus-probably]

Alright sit down for some Art World Drama bcause this is what I live for.

So, sometime last year (?) science invented Vantablack, which is the darkest possible shade of black. Art world got incredibly excited. But as it needs to be very carefully made in a lab, it’s hard to get a hold of, and is extremely expensive. Enter Anish Kapoor, aka FuckFace McGee. Anish Kapoor buys the rights to Vantablack. He is the only human being on the planet that can legally use it, and he’s kind of a prick about it.

Art world is not thrilled with that.

Enter Stuart Semple.

Stuart Semple is an artist, and also makes pigments to sell in his free time. Stuart Semple is astoundingly pissed about this Vantablack nonsense, and Anish Kapoor’s dickery. Stuart Semple makes a new pigment, the brightest shade of pink ever, called Pinkest Pink, and puts it for sale on the internet. To be bought by everybody except Anish Kapoor. Literally, to purchase, you need to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, do not associate with him, and will not sell or give the pigment to Anish Kapoor or his associates. Art world has a good laugh, everyone buys Pinkest Pink because it’s awesome, and damn it we deserve something.

Anish Kapoor however is a penis, and will not take this lying down, because HOW DARE he not have literally everything.

Anish Kapoor gets his London associates to buy him a thing of Pinkest Pink, and being such a classy human being, posts a picture to instagram of him with his middle finger covered in Pinkest Pink, captioned with “Up yours. #pink”

Everyone flips shit, because. Y’know. Fuck that guy. Especially Stuart Semple. For context here, Anish Kapoor is one of the richest artists on the planet, and has repeatedly been referred to as everything wrong with the art world, and the epitome of the art worlds elitism problem. He’s a giant douchebag. Meanwhile Stuart Semple makes pigments just to get them out there. He turns 0 profit from his now enourmously popular pigments.

Stuart Semple launches an investigation as to who the fuck leaked Pinkest Pink, and plans to strike back. He does so by releasing two new products. First is Diamond Dust, which is a glitter made from glass, so that a painting is still visible after it’s applied, but glitters like a mofo. It’s the most reflective glitter out there, and is available to everyone who isn’t Anish Kapoor. And it being made of glass, if you stick your finger in there, it’s going to hurt quite a bit, so that was Stuart Semple’s way of saying “shove your middle finger in this, asshole, see what happens”. Except without saying that, because he can get an insult across while still being fucking classy.

He also releases Black 2.0, created with the help of over a thousand artists worldwide.

Black 2.0 is the answer to Vantablack. Black 2.0 is a slightly less black black, but looks functionally the same to the human eye. It’s completely safe, smells like cherries, and costs four pounds. Vantablack is highly toxic, potentially explosive, needs to be applied in a special laboratory and sealed properly, can’t be moved across borders, can reach 300 degrees celsius if you’re not extremely careful, and costs thousands of dollars. Anish Kapoor is the only human being who can use Vantablack. He is the only human being who cannot use Black 2.0.

So I think we can guess who got the better deal.

And thus the feud ends, Kapoor defeated.

…But not quite.

Kapoor, in this entire afair, has made exactly two comments to the public. The first being his charming message about aquiring Pinkest Pink, the second being claiming to Buzzfeed that he and his small army of lawyers will be suing Semple, an extremely poor artist who cannot afford a lawyer.

No lawsuit has been made yet, fyi.

The point is, Kapoor is a prick, and doesn’t like talking to the lower classes. So one day in July 2017, he decides he needs another floor on his London studio apartment, and starts making arrangements to have it built. His neighbors are fucking pissed, because this will ruin the light of their apartments. They call to Semple to save them, or at the very least piss Kapoor off some more.

Semple answers to the call, and releases two new paints, Phaze and Shift, as always, banned to Kapoor. They change colours, Phaze with temperature, and Shift is just iridescent. Shift needs to be painted over Black 2.0 to work, and Phaze just works on its own.

So that’s been the art world for the last two years.

Basically, get fucked Anish Kapoor your bean sucks and so does your vantablack.

[todayiwrotenothing]

Stuart Semple is organising a bean-kissing event for Anish Kapoor’s birthday.

[secretsfromwholecloth]

Reblogging for “By attending this event you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated with Anish Kapoor, you are not attending on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information, and belief this event will not be attended by Anish Kapoor.”

[queen-of-heck]

ALSO HE JUST POSTED THIS!!!!!! LIGHTEST LIGHT!

[extremedistressorstellarblowjob]

I know this isn’t my art blog but this entire post gives me life

[galahadiant]

im sorry is that man holding a real actual miniature star in his hands

[cat-vee-deactivated20240417]

Y’all missed the best part about the lightest light, called aptly ‘Lit’. This is from their product page:

[aspergersissues]

[jumpingjacktrash]

what’s more sinister is that political views inconvenient to telecom giants will become subtly but persistently harder to access.

[maddiebiscuits]

some people talk shit about homestuck but i vividly recall a lesbian turning into a vampire before chainsawing a dude in half and re-applying her lipstick with the stains of his blood also she and her god-girlfriend live and get married as endgame so frankly everyone can either back off or step up their game 

[argumate]

I’m dubious about the idea of trying to shame neo-nazis by accusing them of being involuntarily celibate losers who can’t get a date, one reason being that the tactic fails to work on anyone who can get a date.

Now, you might say this tactic is still useful anyway on others, and for reinforcing the social perception of neo-nazis as losers that no one should date, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But it still seems to be focusing the attack on a fairly non-central part of the question at hand. The reason to oppose neo-nazi ideology is because it’s terrible, not because its proponents struggle on the dating market.

[bambamramfan]

The point of such dehumanization (and the parallel tactic of rightists calling any SJW ugly and unf***able) is not a calculated strategy of trying to discourage political opinions with the threat “if you hold this opinion you will be insulted,” but rather it serves the much more important function of shoring up the insulter’s own identity.

When political opinion becomes such a key part of someone’s overall identity, people like to link how all their decisions make them universally better off. Did you know that people who go to church are happier in old age, and people with pets live longer, and people who eat your favorite food have reduced risk of cancer? So on top of that, people who have your political beliefs are more likely to be attractive to members of their desired sex. See, every decision you’ve made is part of a virtuous cycle treadmill that leads one into a better life.

The other part of this is that opposing political beliefs are not merely seen as “a thing a person has or believes” but dark magic. To believe in Wrong Thought is usually seen as a way of cheating giving you access to shortcuts that Good and Honest People don’t use. So racism is seen as a “card” one can play in elections that unfairly makes your candidate do better, or social justice ideology is an unfair tribalism that circumvents logic.

We like to accuse unattractive people of being desperate so they must turn to dark magic to get what they want (like PUA), unlike good and wholesome people who use only legitimate methods, and so have no problem maintaining the “correct” ideology. So by that logic, neonazi’s must need their corrupt belief system, and if they were really attractive they wouldn’t have to cheat with such immoral methods.

[spankymerve]

As someone who (broadly speaking) identifies with the political left, most of my disagreements with the left have to do with tactics, not ideology. Dehumanization has never been an effective tactic, and it never will be. One can’t shame people into changing their beliefs. If anything, it makes them double down on their position.

[kitswulf]

Yeah, like, I’m definitely sympathetic to wanting to just primal-scream at the people who put Trump into power until they get blasted away like chocolate under a flamethrower. I get that. I feel it too!

But maybe because of previous dealing with ADHD, I have this little voice in my head that goes “Do you want to do what feels good, or do you want to do what gets you what you want?” Because I need to ask myself that specific goddamn question about 30 times a day.

And what I want is for Trump out of power. I want a democratically-elected government that takes care of people, that causes more help than harm. I want a society where people’s life outcomes aren’t determined by their race, sex, gender, orientation, or class. I want people to feel safe and be well-off enough they can afford to help others. I want an environment that’s minimally fucked-up, and I want an ethical, transparent system of governance over the whole thing.

And the way I get what I want is by bringing over people to our side. We lost in Brexit, we lost in Trump, we lost in Duterte, and we’re probably gonna lose in Marine Le Pen. We’re repeating the same tactics and getting progressively more furious that the same tactics are bringing the same results. And we have a decent body of evidence that challenging people on their beliefs makes them grip those beliefs tighter. By contrast, the best practices on convincing people involves a lot of stuff on providing empathy, giving people a safe space to engage, and reinforcing norms of fairness. I’m not trying to de-escalate because I have some secret desire to treat conservatives/Trump voters kindly and my in-groups nastily, I’m trying to de-escalate because that’s what science says convinces people to change their minds. One of the points of being a liberal is recognizing when reality and your ideology conflict, and accepting that reality gets the win in that arena. My ideology says these people are either stupid or malicious and should be screamed at until they stop or die or something. Reality says that such a tactic generally just makes people become entrenched in their wrongness. And so every time I have that urge (and boy is it common, Trump is really awful at everything excepting conning people, where he seems like a malevolent genius) I ask myself:

“Do I want to do what feels good, or do I want to do what gets me what I want?”

Maybe I shouldn’t be asking just myself.

[lovecrafts-iranon]

Link doesn’t work anymore but I think it’s this thing https://www.nswtf.org.au/files/antiracism_what_works.pdf

[the-real-seebs]

Okay but “antiracism_what_works.pdf” is probably one of the most appealing file names I have ever seen.

What do I want? Less racism. What do I need to get there? Working tactics. OH HEY LOOK.

[jumpingjacktrash]

tumblr in particular is kind of a sinkhole in terms of political methodology, because teenagers and early-20-somethings, while being technically a statistical minority, completely dominate the discourse. and some of the characteristics of the last stage of brain development are poor emotional control, poor grasp of consequences, poor data comprehension, all-or-nothing thinking, and mis-estimation of personal agency.

in other words, what you are mostly hearing on tumblr is the political viewpoints of people who don’t really know much, but have a lot of feelings, know for a fact that they are heroes, and assume their emotions can overwrite reality.

from that college-freshman point of view, of course it makes perfect sense to be loudly outraged, physically violent, and socially cliquish. because cause-and-effect hasn’t really solidified, and facts and history are vague squishy things that don’t really stick in the mind for long, are hard to think about, and ooze around when you try to analyze them.

by grad student age, your brain has completed development and your hormones have settled down. the mere existence of the dark side of human nature no longer sends you into transports of rage that make it impossible to think. you no longer see your emotions as more real than the material world. you’re able to take data on board and work with it in a productive way. and lo and behold, around that age, activists go from throwing bricks through windows and screaming chants, to driving get-out-the-vote vans and giving informative speeches at town hall meetings.

it may seem to younger readers that i’m talking down to you, but i remember being young, and i’m thinking back on how i saw the world then. i legitimately thought yelling FNORD at ‘sheeple’ was an effective way of shaking them out of the catatonic complacency i believed they were living in. i honestly thought assassinating the ultra-rich would be a great way to address wealth inequality. when i joined an environmental group, i honestly felt like going door-to-door in working-class neighborhoods to inform people of a vote on clean water issues was beneath me. i was an arrogant little shit.

frankly i’m assuming you’re better than i was. but your brain still hasn’t finished growing and is not performing at peak yet.

[ithelpstodream]

[jumpingjacktrash]

let me talk about the Three Kings for a second.

for those who aren’t read up on christian mythology: these ‘magi’ from ‘the east’ foretold the birth of a king. they went to herod, the ruler of the region, and asked where the new king was, because they wanted to pay respects. herod was like, “you what now?” and they were like, “you know, the king of judea” and herod was like “I’M THE KING OF JUDEA BITCHES YOU FIND THAT LITTLE USURPER AND – uh – ahem – tell me where he is so i can bring him gifts that are definitely not stabs, okay?”

so they found the kid, and he wasn’t in a palace, he was in a barn. they didn’t care. they were magi, they knew what was up. they gave him three symbolic gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. those have political significance; they were acknowleging him as royalty. they were also worth a lot of money, which they no doubt knew would help the kid’s refugee parents keep him alive.

and then they did not go back to herod, because they weren’t stupid. they just bailed on him.

now, ‘magi’ weren’t kings, but they were high nobility: the priesthood class of the zoroastrian tradition. they were famous for their intricate knowlege of the workings of the heavens – mostly astrology, by modern standards, and quite mystical, but the closest thing in that day to science. they were the bronze age equivalent of astrophysicists.

but to be highly placed enough to take on this errand and have access to both king herod and kinghood gifts, they would also have been men of the world, well aware of the political situation. whatever the method by which they learned of the birth of yeshua of nazareth – and here we kind of have to remind ourselves that this is mythology, even though it intersects with historical events, and just accept that they did somehow find this out, maybe from mary’s instagram, who knows – i think it’s reasonable to think they knew perfectly well that they were going to scare herod out of his wits.

herod was a roman puppet. while his title was ‘king of judea’, he was actually more like a colonial governor. and we know how colonial governors behave. more to the political point, representatives of ancient african cultures and religions would not be terribly fond of this representative of an occupying force. herod might’ve been born in judea, but he was rome’s bitch.

there’s a reason the magi are usually depicted as dark-skinned and riding camels. they represent the africa that rome couldn’t conquer.

okay, so they’re not rome fans, but they’re also not jewish. YHVH is not their god. why are they interested in a divinely mandated king of the jews?

well, my thought is that while Ahura Mazda is not YHVH, they still saw much more kinship with the jews than with the romans. they were monotheists. their god commanded honesty and prosocial behavior rather than the showy sacrifices of wealth and the boozy revelry that characterized so many roman festivals. they refused to treat roman emperors as gods. and the persians, at least, were already pretty well fed up with people from the italian peninsula bulldozing the place with armies centuries since.

okay, so let me put this in a nutshell:

zoroastrian priests, powerful by birth and wealth, the most scientifically advanced people in the world, drop in on rome’s muppet, herod, to tell him in a disturbingly conversational way that his days are numbered.

herod panics, but has no power to do anything to them, and you can bet this was a very public flipout because kings had no privacy.

these priests, probably followed by a growing entourage of looky-loos, give symbols of kingship to a refugee family and bow to their baby.

they then flip herod the bird and ride off into the sunrise, high-fiving, while the ‘rogue one’ end theme plays.

conclusion: the Three Wise Men deliberately sowed the seeds for a jewish revolution.

[debrides]

I worked with toddlers and pre schoolers for three years. Sometimes I accidentally slip and tell a friend to say bye to an inanimate object (“say bye bus!”) & occasionally they unthinkingly just do it.

[lesbirdan]

I’m glad there’s a teacher version of “accidentally called teacher ‘mom’”

[hermionegranger]

when I worked at Medieval Times occasionally I would slip in real life and call people “my lord”

[mugsandpugs1-deactivated2019010]

One time during family prayer, dad began: “our father who art in heaven, American Airlines, how can I help you?”

[thomrainierskies]

One time my dad went to the White Castle drive-thru and the lady (who was supposed to say ‘Welcome to White Castle, what’s your crave?’) asked, “Welcome to White Castle, what’s your problem?”

She apologized profusely while my dad proceeded to lose his shit laughing.

[mirab3lle]

Yesterday I went to Wendy’s and the girl said “Welcome to McDonalds” and then just sighed

[theserpentempress]

Today after working drive through for a solid three hours, I moved to the front counter to take care of a customer. “Your total is $3.47,” I said, maintaining full eye contact, “you can come on up to the window.”

[mousathe14]

I have, on too many occasions, nearly said “Thank you for coming” because it’s part of my automated shpiel, “thank you very much, you have a good rest rest of the day” which I already say when I’m done purchasing something.

[firebirdmaximus]

My nan used to work at Tesco many years back, and apparently when doing the announcements one time she thanked everyone for shopping at Sainsbury’s.

[bolto-deactivated20211002]

my brother just helped a kookaburra that was getting beaten up by magpies and now it’s chilling in his car

[labgnome]

Are there people in Australia?

[bolto-deactivated20211002]

no

[deanhoney-deactivated20220819]

what she says: i’m fine

what she means: the words “christmas tree” are used in the hobbit, and since we know that bilbo is the author of the hobbit, hobbits must have christmas which means there must be a middle earth jesus. but hobbits seem to be the only ones who have the concept of christmas which means it was probably a hobbit jesus. but frodo says in return of the king that no hobbit has ever intentionally harmed another hobbit so who crucified hobbit jesus?? were there other hobbit incarnations of religious figures?? was there hobbit moses?? did jrr tolkien even think about this at all??

[maramahan]

Wait wait I might actually have an answer

Tolkien wrote The Hobbit like waaaay before he even dreamed up the idea for Lord of the Rings, so when he DID dream up LotR, he had a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense. Like plotholes galore

Like for example in the first version Gollum was a pretty nice dude who lost the riddle contest graciously and gave Bilbo the ring as a legit present and was very helpful and it was super nice and polite and absolutely nobody tried to eat anyone because this is a story for kids and that’s very rude

But that doesn’t work with LotR, so Tolkien went back and re-released an updated version of The Hobbit with all the lore changes and stuff to fix everything that didn’t work

This is the version we know and love today

BUT rather than pretend the early version never existed, Tolkien went and worked the retcon into the lore

If you pay attention in Fellowship, there’s a bit where Gandalf is telling Frodo about the ring and he mentions how Bilbo wasn’t entirely honest about the manner in which it was found

To us modern readers, this doesn’t make a ton of sense, so mostly we just breeze by it–but actually that line is referencing the first version of The Hobbit

The pre-retcon version of the Hobbit is canonically Bilbo’s original book. The original version with Nice Gollum is canonically a lie Bilbo told to legitimize his claim to the ring and absolve him of the guilt he feels for his rather shady behavior

Then the post-retcon version is an in-universe edited edition someone went and released later to straighten out Bilbo’s lies

So it’s 100% plausible that the in-universe editor who fixed up Bilbo’s Red Book and translated it from whatever language Hobbits speak was a human who knew about Christmas Trees and tossed the detail in to make human readers feel more at home, because that’s the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you have a translator editor person dressing up a story for an audience that doesn’t know the exact cultural context in which the original story was written

Tolkien was a medieval scholar and medieval stories are rife with that sort of thing, so like… yeah

There’s a good chance it maybe did cross his mind

[scripturient-manipulator]

@old-gods-and-chill LOOK AT THIS THAT’S SO COOL

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

Not only all that, but Tolkien was also working within a frame narrative that he wasn’t the real author, but a translator of older manuscripts; so, in-universe, the published The Hobbit isn’t actually Bilbo’s book, but rather Tolkien’s copy of an older copy of an older copy of an older copy of Bilbo’s book. So when errors and anachronisms came up, he would leave them there instead of fixing them, and he may have even put some in intentionally; what we’re supposed to get from the “Christmas tree” bit is that the first scribe to translate the book from Westroni to English couldn’t come up with an accurate analogue for whatever hobbits do at midwinter.

[anarcho-tolkienist-deactivated2]

Yes. Another example of tolkien doing this is him using, for instance, Old High Gothic to represent Rohirric - not because the people of Rohan actually spoke that language, but because Old High Gothic had the same relationship with English that Rohirric had with Westron (Which is the Common Language spoken in the West of Middle-Earth). There’s tons of that stuff in the book.

[anarcho-tolkienist-deactivated2]

Like, Merry and Pippin’s real names (In Westron) are Kalimac Brandagamba and Razanur Tûk, respectively (to pick just one example of this). Tolkien changed their names in English to names which would give us English-speakers the same kind of feeling as those names would to a Westron-speaker. Lord of the Rings is so much deeper than most readers realise.

[pipistrellus]

I love that phenomenon where ur talking to another neurodivergent person for the first time and u haven’t quite grocked their flavor of brain yet and they haven’t grocked yours and you’re both using your Acceptable Friendly Person Getting To Know You Script on each other but of course those scripts have been calibrated mainly for use with, like, normal people, so you just end up being like two conversational roombas bonking gently off one another like “hello fellow human” “hello fellow ‘hello fellow human’” until you both at some point manage to adjust your programming and actually like, communicate

It’s like when I was a kid I had two furbies and when you put them next to each other they’d just natter nonsensically past one another for a bit and then at some point one would abruptly recognize the other with its furby sensor or w/e and it would shout “DANCE!” and the other one would flap its ears and reply “HEY, DANCE” and then, in perfect unison, they would begin to rock back and forth while chanting “doot doot doo doot doot doo”

It’s exactly like that. I love it. Crazy people are the best, we are super excellent, i love us, i love crazy ppl

[pipistrellus]

I wrote this post in my head while having a major dissociative episode in the bathroom and its the best and truest thing Ive ever said

[jumpingjacktrash]

it is so great tho

i’m that rarest of flowers, an extroverted autistic

i want to make friends with everyone in the world, but allistics are a strange telepathic breed with very delicate sensibilities and if you twitch wrong they run and hide under the couch and make that growly noise and you have to coax them out with treats

so it’s such a relief when i do something that is the conversational equivalent of pulling my arms inside my jacket so i am the Wrong Shape and i expect my conversation partner to start barking and backing up but instead they do it too and we have a little Wrong Shape moment together

(@ my allistic friends i’m sorry if comparing you to pets is insulting, it’s just i have to learn your body language the same way i learn cats and dogs but your ears are not on a swivel and this makes it hard)

[thewolfatno9]

Are you a “hello darlings” gay or a “what’s up my dudes” gay

[earthrosequartz-blog]

“what’s up, my darlings?”

[taste-like]

nem sirok csak 65ezren belementek a szemembe

A crowd of 65,000 sings ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ perfectly while waiting for a Green Day concert

[iamthebadwolf85]

THIS. IS. PERFECTION.

[evieplease]

@catwinchester

[catwinchester-deactivated201901]

Amazing! 

[pyrrhiccomedy]

1. how the fuck did Green Day follow that

2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense - if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day - is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.

That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.

The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.

This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS. 

“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”

Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera - information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application - and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.

And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”

This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea - a meme - can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”

“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”

Man I just fucking love people.

[shinelikethunder]

fiction is not responsible for reality

OK, I’m going to come right out and say it:

Fiction does not affect reality.

Fiction affects people. And people affect reality.

Can fiction have an indirect effect on reality? Sure. But it’s not what’s responsible. People are the ones with moral agency. They are the ones responsible for what they do with the ideas they’ve been exposed to.

You want to defuse the harm you think a work of fiction can do? Target the links in the chain that actually matter:

Criticize bad ideas to change how they affect people. Don’t criticize with the aim of suppressing, criticize with the aim of discrediting. Censorship/silencing just keeps people from being exposed to ideas once, in a particular context, and leaves them unprepared when they encounter them elsewhere or come up with them themselves. A thorough rebuttal of a bad idea inoculates them against it and puts them on their guard next time they run into it.

Educate people about what aspects of a work of fiction would be harmful or dangerous in real life. If applicable, educate them on how to safely experience something similar. Don’t educate with the aim of killing their love of the fictional version–you will lose them, and it’s cruel and unnecessary. Educate with the aim of promoting understanding of how the fictional version does, and doesn’t, translate to reality.

Like. These are the underlying worries beneath “fiction affects reality,” aren’t they? Worry that someone will absorb messed-up ideas that aren’t adequately disclaimed/discredited in the text. Worry that someone will try to act out something that looks fun and exciting in fiction but is dangerous in real life. So cut out the middleman and go straight to the person whose choices affect reality. Don’t smack the book out of their hand, just tell them: I know you like that ship, but it’s okay if a similar RL relationship sets off all your alarm bells and leaves you scrambling for the exit. Because no matter how romantic the ship is, IRL that would be abuse.

Fiction needn’t be educational and fiction doesn’t always have clear-cut endorsements of who’s in the right. But the discussion that happens around fiction can include both.

[earthrosequartz-blog]

Wizard: Tentacle Rod? What's that do?

Bard: I can tell you exactly what it does.

DM: This is a PG-13 campaign!

Bard: ... I have no idea what it does.

[officialprydonchapter-deactivat]

probably gonna get slammed with anon hate for this but like…

much of the ableism towards Autistic people doesn’t happen “because we’re Autistic,” it happens because we’re weird.

now consider that… and now consider what some of the most common insults are here on tumblr.

weird, gross, embarrassing, cringeworthy… all insults based on that same idea of “you are different and we don’t like you.” 

and now consider the constant mocking of “just trying to be special” and “Not Like Other Girls™” that is constantly seen on tumblr.

from early childhood, we are taught and conditioned to know that any deviation from the norm will be punished. for Autistic people, who make up a big portion of what is usually thought of as tumblr’s userbase, this conditioning is often increased tenfold by coercive “therapies” such as ABA and Social Thinking. 

the fact that so much of tumblr’s culture is based on strict deviation from the norm– often citing “weird, embarrassing, cringeworthy, just trying to be special” as offenses– is regressive. and as an Autistic person, I would go so far as to say that it is at least somewhat rooted in ableism. 

if you’re Autistic and you do this, especially if you’re a survivor of coercive behavioral and social treatments designed to make you “normal,” please think about why you take part in this treatment of others. I know you’ve been hurt, and overcoming internalized ableism is hard. I’m here to help.

if you’re allistic and you do this, please stop. just stop. we’ve already been through enough.

also yes, allistics can reblog this. please do, in fact. 

[rhythmic-idealist]

This is absolutely true, and something I’ve been too unsure how to articulate, so thank you.

Yes, don’t mock other people’s special interests. But also don’t mock people who don’t seem to do anything but watch Minecraft youtubers, or talk to you for hours about, I don’t know, MLP or their favorite wrestler.

Yes, don’t mock people for sensory issues or for stimming. But also don’t mock the middle schooler who still sucks his thumb, or that kid who shrieks every time there’s a loud noise, or anything you haven’t necessarily diagnosed in your head as autistic.

It’s as simple as not mocking “weirdness” that isn’t harmful.

Don’t mock people for being autistic, yes, but don’t make it “it’s okay for them to be weird, as an exception, just because I know they’re autistic. This is acceptable because it’s autism.” Maybe, instead, question why it was ever unacceptably “cringey,” and why you needed to know.

Don’t make exceptions for us in “cringe culture”: create a culture in which (aside from any genuinely harmful difficulties/behaviors, I have some, that’s different) we’re not weird.

[tatterdemalionamberite]

This is such an important post! I won’t judge anyone who doesn’t, but if you have room for it on your blog, please share; it would improve many of our lives materially.

[jumpingjacktrash]

lately i’ve started to think that cringe culture is largely perpetrated by people who’ve suffered from it, as a kind of retroactive self-defense. like, “this thing i was punished for is genuinely bad, right? i won’t be punished any more now that i stopped doing it? it’s not just that people are mean and could hurt me again any time?”

it’s yet another of the Just World Fallacy’s poisonous tendrils. people must deserve to get hurt, because otherwise you can’t stop it.

[ernmark]

Just learned about garden path sentences.

They’re basically a literary prank– the sentence starts out in such a way that you think you know where it’s going, but the way it ends completely changes the meaning while still being a complete and logical sentence. Usually it deals with double meanings, or with words that can be multiple parts of speech, like nouns and verbs or nouns and adjectives.

So we get gems like

The old man the boat. (The old people are manning the boat)

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. (The apartment complex is home to both married and single soldiers, plus their families)

The prime number few. (People who are excellent are few in number.)

The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississipi. (The cotton that clothing is made of)

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. (As in he ducks out of his responsibilities)

We painted the wall with cracks. (The cracked wall is the one that was pained.)

[babyanimalgifs]

This is truly incredible.

[stillnotpoliticallycorrect-deac]

Everything truly fits together. Like it was planned. Awe-inspiring.

[prokopetz]

Concept: a tabletop roleplaying campaign where all of the party members are drawn a tribe of Lawful Good kobolds serving a gold dragon. A very, very patient gold dragon.

[prokopetz]

Potential PC concepts include:

A paladin of Bahamut with an incredible Olde English accent (affected, of course - they think that’s how paladins talk, and no-one has been able to persuade them otherwise)

A dragonsoul sorcerer with enthusiastically terrible aim, who mostly uses their high Charisma to apologise

A rogue ostensibly seeking redemption for their extremely complicated Dark Past, the particulars of which never seem to be the same twice

A bard who serves as the tribe’s lorekeeper, and plays the role with a great deal more confidence than their actual grasp of the historical record warrants

A long-suffering fighter whose uncommon command of common sense is mitigated by their poor observational skills

[prokopetz]

More:

Lawful Good or not, humans mistrust kobolds on principle, so certain measures have to be taken when your quests take you to human lands. Past efforts include three kobolds standing on each other’s shoulders with a hat of disguise (it generally ends poorly), and “I’m actually a very short dragonborn” (it works more often than you’d think).

On the flip side, trying to “act natural” when confronted with other monstrous humanoids in order to take advantage of their automatic assumption that you’re on Team Evil. Unfortunately, Lawful Good kobolds have very little notion of how a Chaotic Evil person behaves; fortunately, most larger baddies don’t really pay attention to kobolds anyway.

Pissing off other dragons by converting their kobold servants to Lawful Goodness.

[prokopetz]

(Late in the campaign, there’s a scenario where the party has to go undercover as ordinary minions, and the whole thing is basically them Clark Kenting their way through a series of potentially lethal misadventures, where the challenge is less surviving and more getting through it all without giving away the fact that you’ve got like 20 Strength and fifteen hit dice, or whatever.)