Darktown Lantern

I'LL SHOW YOU WHY MAGES ARE FEARED

[afloweroutofstone]

That weird dynamic where you see “Pagan” in someone’s URL or description on here and then just know that there’s a 25% chance they’re a goth and a 25% they’re a fascist

[thequeerwithoutfear-deactivated]

“that’s a made-up term!” yes. so are all terms. so is every word ever. language is constructed. that’s how language works. stop unevenly invoking the constructed nature of language to try to stop marginalized people from better representing their experiences and identities. 

[thequeerwithoutfear-deactivated]

like, when you say “that’s a made-up term!” we all know what you actually mean is “that term was made up by people i don’t think should be allowed to have a voice" 

[holepsi]

don’t trust the apostate 2: reborn

[kasael-deactivated20250929]

tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism

[kasael-deactivated20250929]

I’d like to clarify:

dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain. 

dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense - in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making - well, you can’t really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place - it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)

so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame - this site has some nice examples.

but from my perspective - there’s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say…. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it’s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that’s your punchline. Take it. I am laughing

in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblr’s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but… at least from a US perspective, there’s plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didn’t even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place… I can’t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement. 

so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it’s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn’t make any sense.

related: this isn’t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA’s atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but… it’s definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and it’s high art, too! I love this

tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal

[kasael-deactivated20250929]

a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:

you see this? this is exactly what I’m fucking talking about. the thing that I’m talking about is:

[gayasscommie-deactivated2017090]

I’d also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.

As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankind’s ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.

[sam-keeper]

My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:

and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:

And it’s so so funny to me that there’s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they’re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it’s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they’re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they’re breaking it and turning it back on itself.

[mizulyn]

I think you might be onto something…

x

Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.

[blackwoolncrown]

This is one of the top 3 best posts I’ve ever seen on tumblr and I’ve been here for years.

[play-dolls]

Love

[fringnubs-deactivated20160831]

[mustangsally78]

STATUS: DAY MADE.

[bebeocho]

o

[aint-that-kind-of-blog-bruv]

This post has been on my mind constantly for ages.

[regdez]

@kiwi-shi

[rackofages]

Does anyone else ever think about how strange it is that a galactic community ruled by

a monogendered race

an asexual race organized by matriarchal clans

an egalitarian race that doesn’t care if you’re male or female

supposedly came up with a very human-like misogynistic culture complete with gentlemen’s clubs and sexist comments (but only to Femshep) and rampant objectification of the asari? Like, isn’t it silly that the galaxy’s supposed culturally dominant race doesn’t actually dictate the cultural norms and instead is misunderstood and diminished for being more open about their sexuality? THAT’S NOT HOW CULTURAL IMPERIALISM WORKS GDI.

Asari attitudes towards sex (and most other things) should be the standard in Citadel space… but no, Bioware wanted sexy babes but also didn’t want to give them any actual power, so we get this weird universe with a race that’s simultaneously discriminated against while supposedly dominating in culture and philosophy. How even does that happen.

[fozmeadows]

I’m always fascinated by worldbuilding that’s borked in this way, because it provides such a clear insight into the cultural blindspots of the writer/s, and can thus be used as a springboard for discussing cultural bias as a more general phenomenon.

For instance: in Guardians of the Galaxy, Drax is meant to be incapable of understanding metaphor - everything he says is literal, as is his interpretation of what other people say. But even knowing she’s not a whore, that’s still what he calls Gamora at one point, because casual sexist slurs against women are so culturally normative that the writers didn’t see it as a glitch in the characterisation. Similarly, in Firefly, despite the fact that being a Companion is a highly trained, socially respected profession, Mal still routinely insults Inara by calling her a whore - which, yes, I get that he was opposed to Unification, so there may be some cultural dissonance, but it’s jarring given that he’s shown to have no issues with women, sex or promiscuity otherwise, and especially given that he himself works as a smuggler. He certainly never insults Nandi the same way, or any of her girls. But it’s culturally normative for us, and so it sneaks into a setting where it otherwise makes no sense.

The problem in such instances is, I think, a failure to recognise the interdependence of various social mores: that cultures, whether fictional or real, are living ecosystems. In English, a great deal of our swear words centre around sex, women, genitals and their various confluences, because that’s the stuff we’ve historically considered shameful. But if you’re writing (for instance) a matriarchal, sexually permissive society, English swearing makes no sense: in that context, calling someone a bitch, a slut or a whore isn’t going to make sense. But because it’s an obvious insult to the writer, they don’t stop to think about why that is, and so miss an opportunity for worldbuilding.  

[badgerheartedgirl]

Somewhere between Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet is a person who knows how to plan just enough.

[malvoliowithin]

Unfortunately, that person was Iago.

[blameaspartame-deactivated20200]

i was looking for pictures of fat salamanders. now i embark on a journey …

[blameaspartame-deactivated20200]

there has been a development

[bevsi]

made a tiny picture book for class. i wanted to challenge the idea that girls loving other girls is somehow adult/inappropriate

[butchdragon-deactivated20180307]

watch me stumble around picking up bits of other people’s personalities like some kind of borderline roomba

[rebelfeathers]

Since pop culture treats these BPD sufferers (and no, they're not all women) as a walking Worst Case Scenario, we thought we'd sit down with one and see what it's like to live with it.

The whole article seems a bit all-over-the-place to me, BUT it had one of those sentences in it where as soon as your eyes hit it the penny drops and your heart skips:

“Harvard professor Judith Herman even believes that BPD may not exist at all, suggesting that it's actually a form of PTSD that has turned into a label to be slapped on troubled women because it fits so neatly into our ideas about them, conveniently allowing them to dismiss us as "born bad." Add the fact that most people diagnosed with BPD have experienced severe trauma to the list of things that are probably not coincidences.”

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

–Margaret Atwood

[clay-cia-deactivated20170825]

Quick,You now live your icon's life,HOW SCREWED ARE YOU?

[mysharona1987]

[iron-sunrise]

BITCH WHAT

[spiritusarcanum-deactivated2020]

I'm just a Witch. Trying to live a Deluxe Edition life, on a Standard Hardback budget.

[self-healing]

stop believing that you ran out of time to shape yourself into who you want to be! stop believing that its ruined! stop believing you don’t have potential! you are not a fixed being! you have endless opportunities to grow.

[raptorific]

@ impeachment folks, February 19th 2017 is your last day to get this shit done and still break William Henry Harrison’s record for shortest presidential term

[nurselaney]

If we’re going to impeach Trump though, we need to impeach Pence as well while we’re at it because THAT’S who gets the presidency if Trump is impeached.

[raptorific]

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m in agreement with you and I support what you’re saying, but it is also important to note that impeaching both Trump and Pence would leave us with President Paul Ryan, which wouldn’t be all that different from President Mike Pence. The fact that the line of succession is, at the moment, five republicans deep, should not deter us from the fact that it’s absolutely necessary that Donald Trump be immediately impeached, convicted, removed from office in disgrace, and legally barred from holding any future public post as quickly as possible. Pence and Ryan are both absolutely vile, wretched, pathetic excuses for human beings, but they would be doing a lot less damage if their Nazi Figurehead Boss didn’t have a death grip on the world’s largest mouthpiece. I agree that both Trump and Pence should be removed from office as quickly and as disgracefully as possible (through legal channels, of course) but given the choice between Trump and Pence, I’d say Pence is about 1% less unspeakably evil (although still unspeakably evil) and I’d trade an arm and a leg to choose Pence over Trump at this point. 

[athelind]

It’s been pointed out that, venal as Pence is, he doesn’t have the popularity, or, more accurately, the NOTORIETY, to BEGIN to get away with the shit that Trump has been pushing for the last two weeks.

This fascist movement is like every other: it’s deeply invested in the Myth of the Strong Leader, and even if removing Lord Dampnut from office were merely a symbolic act (instead of taking the baseball bat away from the petulant, unpredictable child in the throes of a constant tantrum), that symbolic act will be immensely powerful against the fascist myth-complex.

[ragnell]

The other thing people forget is that if Trump gts impeached, then a line is drawn. Pence knows that if he goes THAT far, he gets removed from office too. The rest of the Executive Branch knows not to support him. The Rule of Law is re-established. “Don’t Impeach Trump because Pence is just as bad” completely misses the point of Impeachment, which is to establish that the other two branches of the government have the power to reign in a runaway Executive.

Pence would still be bad, but he could not be nearly AS bad because Congress would have set a standard and demonstrated they’ll hold a President to it.

Impeach Trump, and you put the Fear of the People in Pence.

[kalinara]

And honestly, who do you people think is behind a lot of Trump’s choices anyway?

Do you think it’s a coincidence that the populist rabble rouser has made universally ultra-conservative choices for every appointment?

Pence, Bannon, and people like him are already running things.  They’re already handling whatever Trump doesn’t feel like handling.

If we impeach Trump, we strip away the populist mask and shine the spotlight directly on Pence.  It will still be bad, but at least we’ll be looking in the right direction for the cause.

[violent-darts]

I feel like @larathia’s comment still applies best: two, or even three bosses does not mean we don’t take the boss out it just means WE KNOW THERE’S ANOTHER BOSS TO DEAL WITH AFTERWARDS.

[jumpingjacktrash]

the point of impeachment isn’t to get the president we want. it’s to make it clear that even the president has to obey the law.

if the president breaks the law he must be impeached.

period.

[breelandwalker]

Tbh, I think Trump ought to be impeached, heavily fined for wasting everyone’s time, and deported, just to really hammer the point home.

Charges of election fraud and treason would be nice too. But I’d settle for impeachment.

And a gentle reminder - People said Trump and Clinton were equally horrible during the elections. Look how wrong that turned out to be. Pence is awful, but he is nowhere NEAR Trumps’ level. Lawful Evil is MUCH easier to deal with than Chaotic Evil.

[karina-padilla]

[seriesofnonsequiturs]

“The Senate Committee on Homeland Security is taking calls about 

Stephen Bannon’s appointment to the NSC. 

You can call 202-224-4751

Here’s a script: “Hi my name is _____ I’m from [city state zipcode]. I’m calling to strongly oppose Bannon’s appointment to the National Security Council. Thank you.”

Done and done.

Left a voicemail.

Means the mailbox isn’t full yet - let’s go!

[anxietywithsprinkles-deactivate]

Ahhh the mailbox is full BUT you should call tomorrow morning when it won’t be!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[anxietywithsprinkles-deactivate]

VOICEMAIL BOX IS OPEN AGAIN :)))))) TIME TO LEAVE 50 MESSAGES DENOUNCING THIS FUCKER

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

It’s open, I just left a message! CALL CALL CALL!

[boogiewoogiebuglegal]

I did it last night and I also sent them an email. It really is just that simple.