Clever Title Goes Here

Rants, rambles, fandom squee, bits of poetry, pictures, vids, pimpage, stories about my life and the lives of those around me, and most likely a healthy dose of bitching and complaining. She/They Pansexual Polyamorous Kinkster Ally ALL THE THINGS I'm not shy so go ahead and ask. Just be sure you really want to know the answer.

[quackenreleased]

This is going under a "Read More" because it's a lot.

Glitter in the Apocalypse

❤️

🧡

💛

💚

💙

💜

The world is not okay. Not in the “rough patch” way. Not in the “things will bounce back” way. In the "something is deeply wrong and everyone can feel it in their bones way."

We live in a country where grief refreshes itself every morning. Where the news is a roulette wheel of violence, cruelty, disaster, and policy that somehow always lands on the most vulnerable people. Where people are priced out of safety, dignity, and sometimes even survival. Where the sky is either burning or flooding. Where empathy is treated like a liability and exhaustion is treated like a moral failure.

I’m not confused about the state of things.

I see it. I feel it. I’m angry about it.

So I refuse to surrender my joy.

Because the easiest thing in the world right now is to go numb. To shrink. To stop caring about small things. To become a person who only survives instead of lives. The system loves that version of us. Quiet people don’t organize. Hopeless people don’t resist. Empty people don’t imagine anything better.

So I’m choosing the opposite.

I am choosing to be visibly alive in a culture that profits from my despair.

I will take the pictures of my food and my coffee and my dumb little treats like they matter, because they do. They are proof I still notice pleasure. I will post the bad-angle selfies where I look like a cryptid caught mid-blink, because that’s what a real human looks like in a world obsessed with control and polish.

I will wear the silly outfit. The too-bright one. The too-much one. The one that says I’m not interested in blending into the emotional wallpaper of late-stage capitalism. If the world wants beige, I’m bringing neon.

I will be weird on purpose.

I will be sincere on purpose.

I will love things out loud on purpose.

Cringe is just what people call it when they see someone refuse to be ashamed of their own joy.

Let me be clear: this isn’t escapism. I am not pretending the world is fine. I am refusing to let it take everything from me. There’s a difference.

I still show up. I still vote. I still care. I still grieve. I still rage. I still try to do good where I can. But I also laugh. I also flirt with beauty. I also let myself feel delight without asking permission from the apocalypse.

Because if my joy isn’t built on someone else’s suffering, then it does not need to be justified. It does not need to be quiet. It does not need to be “appropriate for the times.”

These are the times.

In a country that keeps trying to harden me, I am staying soft out of spite.

In a system that wants me numb, I am staying feral out of resistance.

In a world that feels like it’s falling apart, I am choosing to fall in love with tiny things anyway.

My happiness is not ignorance.

My hope is not naïveté.

My whimsy is not weakness.

They are my armor.

So yes. The world is burning.

The future is uncertain.

The present is heavy.

And I am still here.

Still weird.

Still loud.

Still stubborn.

Still choosing joy with my whole chest.

Not because I think everything will be okay.

But because I refuse to let it take me with it.

🔥✨

[rialtostation]

pacific rim fucks severely for a lot of reasons but my favorite is that it opens with "the lizard aliens are unionizing so we built robots running on the power of love to fight them you got all that right" and before you have time to really process that concept bam gunshot body on the floor and the movie goes "now consider the vast power of grief in this setup" it never really stops considering

[catgirlbignaturals]

It also has a scene where the robot uses a boat as a baseball bat. That also fucks tremendously.

[lgbt-tiktoks]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[nattousan]

i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge

[naamahdarling]

This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.

[anjelia3]

“When he bites her and she’s writhing on the floor, in her full orgasm she breaks the table. They missed it. The most erotic thing I’ve ever seen on TV, and the censors missed it completely.” - Sarah Michelle Gellar

[3liza]

love when im watching a documentary and im like "yep thats an egyptologist alright"

[3liza]

oh my god?

[3liza]

[rudjedet]

*hisses in Egyptologist*

So for those of you who don't know yet, this is Colleen Darnell, also known as The Vintage Egyptologist on Instagram where she goes full colonialist in 1920s/1930s clothing complete with pith helmets and using Egyptians both living and dead as props. (Not kidding: she takes Aesthetique™ photos in tombs.) She's married to John Darnell, who was formerly her professor and PhD supervisor at Yale, and it's quite a well-known scandal in Egyptological circles that the two were having an affair before and at the time of her working on that PhD. John, who was married during that affair, eventually divorced his wife and then married Colleen.

In the field, they're considered bad scholars. Beyond the Yale scandal, beyond the fact they're being ridiculously colonialist in the way they present themselves and their "vintage fashion" choices, which they will extend to wearing on actual digs in Egypt itself, their condescending attitudes bleed through in their scholarship. A scholarship that's mediocre at best to begin with, especially John's. However, because they (especially Colleen) have such a strong social media presence, they keep getting asked for docus or to serve as consultants for popular media (e.g. Jodi Picoult heavily consulted them for her novel The Book of Two Ways and whoof it shows), and most people won't question their fashion choices because "ohh aesthetic".

However, by far most Egyptologists severely dislike them for their academic dishonesty and refusal to acknowledge the loaded history behind their chosen mode of dress.

ETA to address some things I've seen in the notes: enjoying 1920s/1930s fashion on its own doesn't make you colonialist. It's the intersect between the choice of fashion and where to wear it - in this case in a professional setting, in a field with a colonialist history - as well as the overall attitude displayed towards the subject of study.

[morgynleri]

Thank you for justifying my great dislike for the both of them every time they show up in a documentary about Egypt, and my desire to reach through the internet to shake them until their teeth rattle.

[psychotic-gerard]

love seeing revisionism in the wild “free the nipple never meant you can walk around topless every where that’s still sexual harassment it just meant for like breastfeeding and stuff”no it literally means you should be able to walk around topless anywhere because get this. breasts aren’t fucking sexual organs.

[roguebombshell]

I remember when I was about 12, I watched a show on TLC that followed people as they got somewhat uncommon medical procedures.

There was one episode with a trans woman getting different gender-affirming operations, including breast implants. It showed the procedure, and (what I found so fascinating that it's stuck with me for decades), as soon as the doctor put the implant in, a censor blur popped up on the nipple.

And you just know there was a meeting between the TLC lawyers and the editors and producers of the show to discuss what the difference was between a "man nipple" (can be shown) and a "woman nipple" (no no must obscure, 'tis naughty). And they decided that as soon as the implant goes in and the nipple has more mass behind it, that's the moment when it becomes a woman's nipple and must be hidden to comply with TV rules.

But it's the same nipple. On the same person. I know what it looks like; I just saw it. But TV and obscenity rules are rules, and the rules say woman nipple = sexual and therefore explicit, but man nipple = neutral, just fine.

"Free the Nipple" was calling out arbitrary bullshit like that, because someone just existing with their body parts should not be considered obscene, and the double standard that men can be topless but women can't is so blatantly ridiculous. All nipples are just nipples. If you get turned on or bothered by them, that's on you.

[bluebeesknees]

To reduce my screen time, I have weaponised my overactive and entirely impractical levels of empathy for inanimate objects. Wym you’re picking it up again? While it was sleeping? You complete and utter monster, let it rest!!

And it works. It works like a CHARM. Silly problems require silly solutions!

[dogwoodbite]

[ID: a phone tucked in very cozy in a perfectly fitting wooden doll-size canopy bed with floral motifs. it has a little dishtowel as a blanket /End ID]

[animentality]

This is just drip.

[whatsallthisnow]

I'm pretty sure what they mean is the people walking around in Puppy Play masks and the like. Nice try though.

[tuulikki]

Being scandalised by pup play masks is so embarrassing it never fails to crack me up

It’s a shirtless dude in a ickle little goofy leather doggy-woggy mask ooooooh terrifying how threatening how terrifying I am traumatised from even imagining it please help me Jesus!!! 😭

What can these people claim to be threatened by, exactly? That they’ll get bitten and turn into a pup play enthusiast, like some kind of kink werewolf?

[shadowknight1224]

You saw someone with a puppy mask in public??? Ohhhh my godddd should we call the news??? Should we call you an ambulance???

[japanese-gum]

this is what you're afraid of?

[ace-pervert]

Soooo scary.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[freenos]

[sndwave]

the funniest thing in the entire pirates of the caribbean series is definitely that one scene in At World’s End where they have parlay but davy jones is part of it, and rather than have him stand in the shallows or something they get a big bucket of water and have in stand on it on shore

who thought of that idea? who thought “put davy jones in a bucket of water” and had the guts to suggest it aloud? and then who went “hey that sounds like a great idea!”

at some point someone told davy jones their idea was for him to stand in a bucket of water and he agreed to it

[sndwave]

*stands majestically in a bucket*

[stemmmm]

ok but notice the trail of buckets behind him meaning he walked from the ocean through three other buckets of water before he got into the one hes standing in

[prokopetz]

It’s even funnier when you consider how he must have figured all this out in the first place.

Some folks are asking “well, if he can avoid the no-dry-land curse simply by standing in a bucket, doesn’t that ruin his whole motivation?”, but he’s not on dry land here.

The parley takes place on a sandbar - which, for the unfamiliar, is a temporary “island” of sand deposited by breaking waves, unconnected with the shore, that spends most of its time submerged, being exposed only at low tide.

What Jones is doing here is rules-lawyering his curse. Can you imagine the trial and error he must have gone through in order to determine that this would actually work?

“Okay, do islands count as dry land? How about parts of the shore below the high tide mark? Reefs? Shoals? What if I stand in a pool of water on a shoal? Does it have to be seawater, or will any water do? Does it have to be a natural tidepool, or can it be something artificial, like a bucket?”

What I am saying is that there must have been a process.

[stumblngrumbl]

Pretty sure that this implies that the reverse - a bucket of sand, floating on the water (big bucket with just a bit of sand), would qualify as dry land. That’s absurd, so I’m pretty sure that his lawyer pulled a fast one over the curse governor.

[prokopetz]

It may be absurd, but the text of the film bears it out. Davy Jones can sense the presence of his heart while it’s at sea, but not while it’s on land (indeed, that’s why he buried it on land in the first place: to break his connection with it) - yet placing the heart in a simple jar of dirt conceals it from Jones’ awareness just as surely as burial on land does, even if the jar is on a boat at the time. Suitably prepared vessels filled with dirt absolutely count as dry land for the purpose of Jones’ curse.

[silver-tongues-blog]

Then the reverse should also be true. If he buried it in a jar of water, no matter how far inland it is, he would be able to sense it. So by this logic, any container of seawater counts as not dry land, ergo, the bucket is a perfectly viable loophole.

[prokopetz]

Not necessarily. It’s traditionally a lot easier to accidentally get whammied by a curse than it is to weasel around it - I figure that’s why he’s using multiple layers of indirection here. He’s forbidden to set foot on dry land, but it’s technically not dry land (it’s a sandbar, a non-permanent landform exposed only at low tide) and he technically didn’t set foot on it (he’s standing in a bucket of water). It’s entirely possible that either one of those things alone wouldn’t make the grade.

[officialharshnoise]

okay but this all raises one further, very important question: if it’s specifically “dry land” he’s forbidden from, what about wetlands. can Davy Jones fight you in salt marshes? can he throw down in a peat bog?Swamp Battle?

[musicalhell]

This is the quality content I come to Tumblr for.

[karometeenk]

could he step on land if his shoes are wet?

[there-was-a-girl]

No matter how ridiculous PotC gets I will love it. Especially when it results in conversations like this

[glumshoe]

What if he crawls around on his hands and knees, with his feet raised slightly into the air? Can he walk on his hands? Can he ride around in a litter or a wheelchair?

[princedorkface]

can he be in a wheelbarrow?

[bemusedlybespectacled]

What if he flies over dry land? Like in a hot air balloon, or in the claws of a giant bird?

[pantheraj]

What if he’s carried by two swallows using a strand of creeper?

[strikelikeahawk]

European swallows or African swallows?

[thinster13]

this whole thread reads like a conversation between these two:

In fact im not entirely sure that it wasn’t their idea in the first place

[weaselle]

Davey Jones: “It’s killing me that I can’t be at the meeting because of this stupid curse”

Pintel: *licks a spot off his wooden eye and pops it back in his head* Actually, Cap’n, beggin’ yer pardon, but Ragetti an’ me been doin’ quite a lot of theo-retic-ising about that

Ragetti: *very seriously* yeah, men o’ science, what we is, an’ that’s a fact. G’wan Pintel, tell ‘im what I said

Pintel: *suprised* Oh? well, you said “dunno what’s so bad about the Cap’n bein’ an ugly scary monster” and I said “pro’ly wants a beard doesn’t fight ‘im when ‘e brushes it” and you said “pro’ly does smell half a rotten squid if ‘e kiss you” and then you said –

Ragetti: *bopping him over the head with the cannon ramrod” not that, not that! The other thing!

Pintel: right! That do make more sense dunnit, right, Ragetti ‘e said, like, the ocean got land too, just, under the water like, an’, well, it got me thinkin’… you know how a sand bar is just ocean land that pokes up sometimes?

Davey Jones: *massaging his temples with his tentacles* listen, it won’t work, if it’s not underwater then it be dry land

Ragetti: That’s what I said! But then Pintel, ‘e says – 

Pintel: *holding up a bucket* what if technically it WAS underneath some water?

Davy Jones:

[neltharions-lab]

IM LOSING IT THEYRE GAY I SWEAR

i don’t want to read this straight man as bisexual but my hand is being forced here guys

[spacecowbabe]

when Brennan said "The first rule of existence is: as above, so below. People are fractal images of the universe. You are as we are. In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't."

when Brennan said "It is a horrifying responsibility to think because things cannot remain the same, each and every one of us must shoulder some responsibility for how they will become different."

when Brennan said "Sometimes decisions are not difficult. Sometimes they are just hard."

when Brennan said "There is no moral. The Wolf eats you one day and until it does, the forest is beautiful."

when Brennan said "I always felt the fundamental substance of the universe is creation. None of this makes any sense, when you really break it down. It's like, none of this had to happen, but it's beautiful and art is the definition of 'this didn't have to happen, but it's beautiful.' [...] It resonates with the universe because the universe is consciousness playing with itself."

when Brennan said

when Brennan said

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

There really isn't anything quite like The Dresden Files because the author (Jim Butcher) is fucking wild. For example:

Meta-jokes in the text that only make sense if you know that the audiobooks are narrated by the guy who played Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (James Marsters)

The author fucking with the Marsters by putting the word "little" in the text a bunch of times in a single page based on a note Marsters gave him (the word "little" is, apparently, hard to enunciate)

The author using the books to take shots at the person who does the covers because they didn't read the first book and made the decision to give Dresden a hat on the cover of the first book (and thus every subsequent book)

A plot-relevant BDSM scene that only exists cuz the author heard someone say that such a thing is impossible and took it as a personal challenge, and

The author spoiling a major plot event to fuck with someone on Twitter

And goddamn if it isn't amazing

[mirren-star]

I have been waiting for the skies to fall for years now. How fulfilling it would be to lose myself. I would kiss the clouds and bite them like cotton candy. With a single romance, the skies will relieve me of physicality and I will be anew. I, a palimpsest never known, will be painted in the blues of nature. A flattened body undone, a pure of heart remains and it will be all that I have ever been. I am not made for ascension so I must bring the skies down to me.

The fact that Fountain is pissing off trads over a 100 years later is so fucking funny

[fairyhaven13]

As an art major, while I know Fountain is a valid piece of art that accomplished exactly what it set out to do, I also think it’s one of the stupidest things. We have a urinal in a museum display. I have yet to see a work I think is dumber.

[inthefallofasparrow]

[punk-a-cat]

The thing I love most about Duchamps urinal piece is that it was so “low cost” in terms of creative labour (compared to say, a large scale oil painting or sculpture for example), but it’s absolutely FULL of rage against the traditionalists and the world at that time and it’s SUCH a statement, it’s like, “oh just a mass manufactured item with a signature” but the reality of it is so many layers of meaning and without understanding the history at the time you don’t get it.

It’s an incredibly clever “fuck you” and I love it

[xanderwithanx]

An old professor of mine, an expert in Duchamp who has written several books, has a theory. In part, “Fountain” was a prank, a personal “fuck you” to the organization looking for artworks. It’s importance cannot be overstated, and this importance stems from the fact that “Fountain” is /ridiculous/. It is enraging, it is hilarious, and it is very fascinating.

Aside from Duchamp’s readymades, I love “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even”. Pictured below, the work invokes a complex machine, one my professor spent a great deal of time studying. Eventually, he reached his conclusion. My professor had been pranked. He believes “Bride Stripped Bare” is a joke about masturbation, hidden to all except those study it excessively.

At first blush, Duchamp’s works are stupid. Upon further study, they’re very complex. And, upon true understanding, Duchamp is laughing at you. To me, it seems the closer you come to truly understanding Duchamp, the more he slaps you in the face with a large fish.

[xanderwithanx]

Let me rage about “traditionalism revival” here. This is a dogwhistle.

As a lover of art, there are many complex and technically impressive works being created today, which both embrace different artistic traditions and break from them. To ignore those is to ignore contemporary art.

Here, OP is raging against conceptual art, which stimulates thought and challenges tradition. He wants his followers to believe that art has “degenerated”, because the West has “degenerated”. OP is intentionally engaging with fascist ideas of “degenerate art”.

If OP wanted to be accurate, he would seek to restore the Salon System, the Beaux Arts Academy, and classical training in the arts. The collapse of this specific system allowed for Modernism to evolve. Of course, that’s not what OP is talking about. He’s evoking beauty as a moral standard, telling his followers to “restore Western tradition”, to fight against aesthetic “degeneracy” in culture.

(By the way, Duchamp is commenting ON MODERNISM with “Fountain”. Duchamp submitted the work to the Society of Independent Artists’ salon in New York, who would accept any work by any artist, for a small fee. In part, Duchamp is saying, “Is this what you Modernists want? A urinal? Look me in the eyes and prove this is not art.”

If OP dared to use his brain, perhaps he would agree with Duchamp here.)

[riotsquirrrl]

The thing is that it isn’t even a urinal! It doesn’t match any model manufactured at the time. Also Duchamp was an accomplished ceramicist. It’s likely that he made the sculpture and absolutely everyone is like “I know what a urinal looks like. This is sufficiently urinal-shaped for me to assume it is one without looking at it closely!”

Duchamp had other readymades, like his snow shovel, where if you actually look at the photos, the handle is square and the bowl is way too flimsy. Why would manufacturers make a snow shovel with a squared-off handle? It’s impossible to hold! Duchamp slapped the “readymades” label on all these items and the hoity-toity art people who were so good at looking at things didn’t see it (probably because they’d never had to do labor like shovel snow imo, amongst other things).

Marcel Duchamp. In Advance of the Broken Arm. Museum of Modern Art. (4th Version [Ed.!!!] after lost original of November 1915)

[the-real-seebs]

wait what. there… what?!?! IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL URINAL?!? or might not be anyway. what the fuck.

if the dude seriously did that, his troll game is out of everyone’s league except Leader Kibo.

[foone]

My favorite thing about Fountain (besides the fact it has been pissing off fascists for over a century, natch) is that the original was lost and he made a bunch of official editions to sell to various museums (after the original was lost, possibly on purpose).

And they’re different! If it was a real “readymade” he could have just bought some more at his local hardware store, but no. He changed them in OBVIOUS WAYS.

See the triangle of holes?

Here’s the one from the Tate Modern:

Oh hello, cross-holes. Fancy seeing you here.

SFMOMA’s edition has the triangle holes, but it also has a line of holes at the top that are completely different from either other version.

Here’s one from Moderna Museet. Line and a circular set of holes!

Duchamp definitely intentionally made these different on purpose. It’s a “readymade” but it’s not, really, each of these is a specific custom creation.

It’s not even clear if he made it! He wrote a letter to his sister claiming that a female friend sent it to him, and he just enrolled it in the art exhibit under his own name. There’s also a possibility that that female friend was himself, since he later had a female pseudonym of Rrose Sélav.

This whole piece of art is a fractal troll, and it’s a beautiful one.

[roach-works]

art is a creative statement.

sometimes that statement is ‘go fuck yourself’

[therealbeachfox]

Art has a message and sometimes that message is “die mad about it.”

[the-haiku-bot]

Art has a message

and sometimes that message is

“die mad about it.”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[theramblergal]

silhouette

Horatio still sees him. 

Whether it is at Wittenberg, the memory of Hamlet’s loud laughter ringing in his ears as he walks the too-empty halls of the university; whether it is in the moments Horatio finds himself unable to rise from bed, much too wrecked with grief over the lacuna in his chest to bother getting about his day; whether it is when Horatio cracks a smile at a stupid joke that one of the younger students make, Horatio sees him.

It is nothing, only a blip. The curl of glossy black locks, the unhidden twinkle in ocean blue eyes. The words on the edge of a margin, sand slipping between his fingers. 

Horatio wanders the gardens of Elsinore, sometimes. Having been given special leave by His Majesty Fortinbras, for the young king recognises something of his own grief in Horatio’s gaze, he is free to roam the castle with nary a questioning gaze. (Sad and pitying ones, those he cannot escape.)

Once, he comes upon a couple.

They must be in the first stages of their relationship, those early days where all the world seems brighter when your beloved is with you. They giggle, and sneak small touches, and stare at the other like there is nothing else in the world. One of them brushes back an errant curl from their lover’s face with absentminded devotion.

He watches, hidden in the bushes. 

The silhouette of a hand slips into his, and Horatio does not have to wonder any longer.

yet another double drabble. i kinda like this one a lot!

[sandersstudies]

Hey, you reblogged that AI post and I was surprised to see something so mean on your blog. "If you cant write unassisted, fuck you, youre a disgrace to the community." Is that really something you want on your blog?

Just in case this isn't a spam message:

Posting AI-generated content to a platform intended to be an archive for writers is not appropriate use of the platform. On a platform intended for human creation, it is rude and inappropriate to clog search results with AI-produced content which often plagiarizes the work of human authors.

Use of generative AI is also horrible for our environment, leading to massive waste of fossil fuel energy and water. We should not be doing damage to our planet for the sake of generating (robot-produced, often plagiarized) fiction, especially when the joy of fiction comes from the creation and emotion of real people.

Rather than giving a prompt to a generative AI, people should consider attempting to write their own work, or asking another writer from the fandom if they would be interested in writing it. Anyone who is capable of typing a prompt into ChatGPT is capable of writing a story. The first attempts may not be amazing, but that is true of any skill, and anyone can improve with time and practice - and while ChatGPT may give you big returns in your time, it doesn't give you practice, growth, or creativity, which is where the joy of writing should come from.

[fofflesnave]

To add to this, generative AI isn't an assistant for disability. Something that assists you helps you complete a task. You do the task yourself, the thing assisting you just helps you manage parts that aren't possible for you. Assisted writing could be using dictation, using a screen reader, relying on a spellchecker, typing instead of writing by hand, etc.

You aren't doing the writing yourself if you use generative AI. You're offering up a single sentence and asking a machine to steal the hard work of others so you don't have to actually write anything. The hard work you steal may well belong to people who actually need assistance with writing, and absolutely will not appreciate seeing the struggles they overcame being turned into slop for others to claim as their own.

Enjoy the creative process. Be part of the creative process. Don't become reliant on AI to the point where you can't think, create or act for yourself. This is why AI isn't an assistant. It takes independence and from you, instead of helping you realise it. It convinces you that you can't do things, instead of helping you try. It tells you to just leave it all to the machines and don't bother yourself with the fun (and struggles) of creating.

[sl-walker]

If you use generative AI, fuck you.

[shadowmaat]

Generative AI generates content. That means the person using it isn't doing the work themselves. And that means it isn't a tool, it's a bypass. And it's a bypass used by lazy, entitled people who are more interested in "content" than in telling a good story. People who want headpats for being "creative" when they're so unoriginal they can't even do the work themselves.

Spellcheck, voice-to-print, screen readers, etc. aren't "AI," they're tools. They are what writers use to help capture their stories that they wrote. The writer does all the real work of creating and then uses tools to assist them in getting it down properly. Folks who try to lump it all together with shit like chatgpt are deliberately arguing in bad faith so that they can their machine-generated bullshit behind real tools that actually help.