The Library

fighting entropy; filled with spite; she/they

[onsuchsmallthingstheworldturns]

[maybeasunflower]

Interesting how they both regard "breaking the law" as different from "risking arrest"....

[cedarwool]

yesterday i was at the woodworking store getting a knife sharpener because i've been really into whittling hair sticks out of hardwoods which dulls your blades like mad. and the lady who was helping me said "oh yeah i know the feeling of jumping into a project that turns out more complex, that's how i feel about my cable knit right now"

which in turn activated my sleeper autist, and we ended up talking about fiber arts, where i learned that this woman is part of the local lacemaker's guild and uses her woodworking experience to carve lace bobbins on the lathe. she then gave me the email address of the woman who runs it, because their group has no social media and only meets when the lead lady says 'everyone come to my house.'

while all of this was going on, another woman walks up. her partner was shopping for wood repair stuff and she heard us talking about fiber- she's a spinner who does historical reenactments nearby. period accurate, processes the wool herself. of course i ask her if they need volunteers and she gives me her contact info

long story short. autism is everywhere you look and you have to be okay with chatting with strangers. i don't remember where this post was going

[softboyshaven]

Thinking about the Holmes story where a blind girl goes to him and is like "My fiancé is missing and he kept telling me the week leading up to his disappearance that he would always love me and come back for me,were anything to happen so I think he knew he was in trouble and I love him so much and I'm going to wait for him but I'd like to find him faster,ya know?" And Holmes figures out that it was this girl's parents to scam her out of money she was owed from an estate which she gave to them because she was still living at home,which she wouldn't be if she ever married,so her step father PRETENDED TO DATE HER for MONTHS to keep her from ever getting engaged to a real person and when Holmes finds out he confronts this man and this man is like "Well,you caught me! But it wasn't illegal:) so:)" and Holmes is like "No,but it was sickening and cruel and if she had a brother or good male friend he should post you up and whip you but she doesn't." And the man is like "No,she doesn't." And does the Victorian version of sticking his tongue out and Holmes is like "Well,I guess I'll do then!" And HE PULLS OUT HIS HUNTING WHIP.

[darthlenaplant]

Holmes really went:

[getvalentined]

This is what we mean when we say everyone should support people with disabilities

[burnbrighterthanever]

Be the Sherlock Holmes chasing domestic abusers with a riding crop that you wish to see in the world.

[charlesoberonn]

I should point out that her fake fiance "disappeared" on their wedding day on the way to the church.

[shanehollandered]

listen, the sheer fucking balls to the wall bravery shane puts out by saying “you feel it too, don’t you?” is actually insane because he phrases it like a question but it’s basically a statement. he knows ilya feels it too. this is just to give him a little grace.

i love it. that's my shane!!!!! full throttle once he’s locked in!! ilya out there in that hotel room fighting for his life while shane is like. no. you got nothing on me. this is not a competition because i won before we even started. you are my target and i am locked on. don’t even try to run away.

[lake-erie]

this year’s prom theme is… *opens envelope* Great Lakes Invasive Species And What Boaters Can Do To Stop Them

[football-in-tuxedos]

And the subject of tonight’s ecology panel is *turns on powerpoint* Enchantment Under the Sea

[notlayingroses]

in my opinion, the question isn't "Is RPF ethical?" but rather "Are you engaging with RPF ethically?" and even more importantly, "Are you being stupid about it?"

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

But just have some basic decency and do not involve the real people. Don't cross the line without caring how it affects them. This is basic fandom 101 and lately we have been flying too close to the damn sun! Everyone get more normal about RPF so major news outlets and magazines stop posting articles about "Is RPF ethical?" and blowing up our spot!

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

The "coworker" factor is so important and, I think, really helps put a lot of celebrity culture into perspective.

[audible-smiles]

My memory of The Birdcage (1996) is always that it's more dated and more difficult to watch than it actually is. You hear "drag-themed comedy from the 90s based on a musical from the 80s based on a play from the 70s" and you brace yourself just a little, right? But the film has a strong gay perspective, so the fruity fag jokes mostly come off as warmly affectionate. There is a surprising amount of poignancy in Robin Williams' portrayal of Armand, grudgingly agreeing to his beloved son's request that he go back into the closet for an evening ("do me a favor and don't talk to me for a while"). The drag club's staff attempting to redecorate the apartment with stuff straight people might like (a taxidermy moose head, an enormous crucifix, and Playboy magazine) is extremely funny. Albert's histrionics are a point of tension because he does often come off as a stereotypically pathetic/comic figure, but towards the end of the movie he makes it very clear that he's aware of how people see him, and asserts that trying to copy a stoic masculinity he doesn't possess for the sake of social approval would be more pathetic. In the 1983 musical adaptation, they give "Albert" (Albin) the only good song in the whole show, "I Am What I Am", which Gloria Gaynor covered to the delight of gays everywhere. Apparently Nathan Lane wasn't (publicly) out yet in 1996, which is amazing because it means that at one point in this movie you're watching a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man playing a straight man, in a movie about how it's important to be yourself, an absurdity that does seem to encapsulate the state of gay America in the 90s.

[silverhand]

I'm seeing a couple of posts circulating about the gay 90s and this movie. The above is a very good summary, and I think it's worth adding a few other points.

This movie got made because Robin Williams said yes to it (and it's important that Gene Hackman did as well). Williams in the 90s was a mega-star of a type that's not present in the current media environment (maybe Tom Cruise, but I personally think that's echo from his salad days). Even his flops made money on the back end in the video rental market, which also doesn't exist anymore (streaming is different). Hackman was on the other side of his A-list career but still Hollywood nobility if not full royalty.

Playing gay was considered career suicide in the 90s. There had been a number of actors who put lie to that belief stretching back decades, but this was Williams and Hackman (yes, being on screen next to a gay character was enough to get you blacklisted) saying "screw that" and doing it anyway.

Being gay and out was career suicide in the 90s.

Nathan Lane had a really nice gig going for himself. The Lion King put him into the Disney rep company with people like Williams, Bette Midler, and Whoopie Goldberg (check their IMBD list from the 90s--they were making bank at Disney).

Lane didn't come out until several years later (nice summary: https://deadline.com/2024/06/nathan-lane-robin-williams-advice-coming-out-birdcage-1235975010/).

I don't want to imply that this was a Sorkinized moment where everything changed because of one thing, but this was a very important movie that caused real movement in the needle on queer acceptance.

It also proved that there was a market for films with gay characters, which had the knock-on effect of gay filmmakers being able to find distributors of their gay-themed films. Which meant that more people than ever (queer and non-queer) got to see representation on-screen.

[tieflingkisser]

[pardalote]

Mine was buried even deeper, under Devices -> Typing -> How AI has helped you.

(Spoiler: it hadn't helped me. But it was on by default.)

[batmanbeyondrocks]

Black Menswear modelled by Black Men

Creative Director Rock Mitchell

[kowabungadoodles]

[monsterpotion]

another underappreciated tumblr feature that you dont get on other sites is the queue. i love it when something i thought was funny six months ago and then forgot about a week later crawlts its way out of the processing vortex and i get to see it all over again.

[monsterpotion]

you should queue this post it would be funny and grant me immortality

[monsterpotion]

you motherfuckers put me in the processing vortex

[monsterpotion]

THE TIME LOOP

[monsterpotion]

happy time loop thursday everyone

[hollanov-ann]

Hudson Williams - BVLGARI ✨

[ladyshinga]

[turgidturnip]

[turgidturnip]

[turgidturnip]

I just had to collect all of these responses together in one place

Edit: And one from my friend, who doesn't have a tumblr (yet)

[ladyshinga]

#i keep waiting for someone to address the '18th century looms were huge' claim#like sure some were#but the fact that textile mills had been invented doesn't mean that all home weaving ceased#indeed people still weave for fun or profit in this the 21st century#smaller looms were still being built and used in the 18th century just as smaller looms are still being built and used today#and that's without considering the existence of inkle/tape/band looms which were/are used for making narrower woven ribbons for trimming etc#small 18th century looms absolutely exist

there are thousands of notes and a few people ABSOLUTELY addressed this xD

[twistedmaiden]

I wanna add mine! But it still has some assembling to do before I can move on to the next step

[quick-to-query]

...Okay this place *is* better than Reddit.

[stormneedle]

My wife did a lot of hand crafts while we were dating. After we got engaged, my father piped up that at least she didn't have a spinning wheel. We put it in the doorway the first time my parents came to visit.

Her loom is packed away at the moment so she can work on an uncountable number of knitting projects and metalwork at the moment.

[a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark]

Fibercrafts.

Not even once. You start with "Oh, I'd love to learn the drop spindle" And the next minute your home office is occupied by a loom, you're planting flax in the garden, and considering the logistics of owning an alpaca.

[xialiuyi]

Connor Storrie & Hudson Williams as Ilya Rozanov & Shane Hollander

[ecobanshee]

This is some of the most straightforward characterization Grace gets in the book and it's hilarious

[akdw]

absolute perfection in a single paragraph. From this, we can see:

Grace has a warped self-perception. He insists he's not a "people person" but gets along with majority of the crew, is a literal middle school teacher who the kids love

he's so sassy bro. "I seem friendly only bcuz I stood next to Stratt"

also establishes why so many ppl thought Grace was second-in-command, like he's usually always standing next to Stratt

Grace just does not know how important he is to the project lol

[maculategiraffe]

my mom didn't believe in lying to children so when I first asked about santa claus as a small child she was like "oh santa claus is another name for a man named saint nicholas who lived a long time ago. he was a very kind and generous man and he loved giving people presents and he would do things like put presents in people's stockings when they were hung up to dry by the fire, so they would find them and be surprised. so now when we give presents at christmas it's fun to pretend saint nicholas or 'santa claus' brings them. and we hang up stockings by the fire and when we get up in the morning there are presents in them, just like if saint nicholas was still alive to bring them!"

so that thanksgiving one of my uncles said jovially "so mac, are you being good for santa claus?" and little (not quite three year old) mac looked up and raised an eyebrow and said witheringly "he's dead."

[buffysummers]

Rupert Giles + 🔥 🔥 🔥 [requested by Anonymous]

[rottingtrouble-child]

I saw this video about a doctor who performed an MRI on a 5 year old and discovered she essentially had “brain damage” from excessive iPad use, as the white matter in her brain couldn’t form properly due to an understimulated environment.

Hmm it’s almost like there’s supposed to be adult figures responsible for monitoring her screen time and making sure she develops properly… certainly this isn’t the result of neglect at the hands of her parents…

[rottingtrouble-child]

“This 5 year old is brain damaged by excessive iPad use”

Translation: This 5 year old is developmentally impaired by neglectful parents who used an iPad as a stand-in for social and environmental stimulation / interaction for hours at a time during critical early stages of child development. The iPad is the cop-out.

[rottingtrouble-child]

“Children don’t have the strength to hold pencils anymore because they only use screens.”

Translation: Parents aren’t making the conscious effort to help their children develop necessary skills and letting iPads raise them.

When are people going to realize the iPads and whatnot are the instruments through which the neglect is happening through and not the cause? How the fuck do you let your child have such a severe lack of physical strength in their hands that they can’t hold a pencil properly?

[rottingtrouble-child]

People will see a study suggesting children with higher screen times have poorer or negative developmental outcomes and immediately say it’s the screens causing this, and not the more likely fact that higher screen time = less engagement time with their environment, physical exercise, parents, family, and their peers, all of which are NECESSARY for a healthy upbringing as a social species.

It’s like saying a dog who was kept in a cage all its life and left with atrophied muscles was damaged by the cage, and not by the fact its owners were too lazy to play or walk their dog in order for its muscles to build properly. The cage is the instrument of neglect and the owners are the perpetrators, in the same way parents are the perpetrators and weaponizing screen time as an excuse and painting themselves as helpless bystanders.