The Temple of Sphinx

A random collection of sillinesses and ramblings and lots of lovely pictures of people and things I care about. 60, bisexual, married for 30 years to a wonderful woman. Fandoms: Many and varied, but major ones are Shakespeare, Sherlock, MCU, obscure British films, British mysteries, and Doctor Who, fanfiction on AO3 under sphinxvictorian.

[henryofwales]

Luiza's favourite movies ↳ The Holiday (2006)

[thewolveswithin]

🆕🎭Ralph Fiennes as Henry Irving and Miranda Raison as Ellen Terry performing in a scene from Grace Pervades during a photocall at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, central London. Picture date: Tuesday April 28, 2026

[queerazonbooks]

Today we remember the 49 lives lost and countless others forever changed on June 12, 2016, at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. What was meant to be a night of joy, music, and pride became one of unimaginable tragedy.

We honor the memory of those we lost—most of them young, queer, and Latinx—and we stand with the survivors, the families, and the community still healing.

Let this day be a reminder: queer joy is powerful, queer spaces are sacred, and love must always outshine hate.

[preraphaelitepaintings]

Guinevere

Artist: Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (British, 1872-1945)

Date: 1919

Medium: Watercolor, color plate

Collection: Private Collection

Description

Lines printed with the title: "Her memory, from old habit of mind / Went slipping back upon the golden days / In which she saw him first, when Launcelot came" (from Tennyson's Guinevere).

Anthony Harrison talks of the "extraordinarily wide dissemination" of Tennyson's Idylls of the King (605), and it enjoyed tremendous success throughout the period, despite the poet's traditionalist stance in Guinevere.

William Morris's "The Defence of Guenevere" put a different complexion on her adultery. Harrison notes that it was too radical for most readers when first published (1858), but became influential later. Brickdale's representation of her, as beautiful and at one with surrounding nature, seems to confirm a shift in sympathies.

[eroscestlavie]

What do you guys do for work. Job share time. I want to know

[only-cat-memes]

[cricketcat9]

WestSide Story

[catasters]

[rtfics]

sound on

Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp discuss the details of another case.

[4mtns]

NASA just dropped the closest image ever taken of Jupiter

[importantcatpics]

[eulers-babe]

for no reason whatsoever here’s a reminder that if you consider yourself a leftist/punk/abolitionist/anarchist/radical in any sort of way and get called into jury duty, you are to become the most square person on earth during the jury questionnaire!!!

don’t be that guy who says fuck the police in the jury questionnaire! that just gets you sent home! if you want to generate change, interact with the case and use your jury vote for good! ESPECIALLY if it’s a high profile case!

[libraryogre]

Remember, when you're on the jury, a good "that cop's story didn't add up" will sway a lot more Chads and Karens than "fuck the police."

[damnfool-of-a-took]

Had jury duty, can confirm!

An innocent man is home with his family instead of spending his kids' whole childhoods in jail for "resisting arrest" when none of the cops could agree on why he was being arrested in the first place. (But it definitely had nothing to do with him being a Black man in a nice car, honest! 🙄)

And it still took like two hours of delibration after we'd heard all the evidence because one lady was so gung ho about believing everything the cops said, even when not a single goddamn one could agree with their own testimony, let alone their colleagues'.

Pointing out all the inconsistencies and admitted misconduct and letting people slowly come to their own conclusions as the trial played out was fucking hard, I won't lie. I can be patient, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

But. Yelling about how this was obviously a bs case would have shut everyone down and made them stop listening. Asking questions and letting people discuss how the cops tried to make xyz sound suspicious but it was totally normal, or about how if things played out the way the cops said then logically events should have proceeded in a totally different direction, and positing different theories that actually lined up with the evidence presented?

That got people thinking, and everyone realized that for a variety of reasons we all had reasonable doubts that the defendent had committed any of the crimes of which he was accused.

Being able to raise reasonable doubt among a jury of one's peers saves lives. If you get the chance, take it.

[genderkoolaid]

"Jury Room / The Holdout" (1959) by Norman Rockwell. One of my favorites of his. Particularly the gendered dynamic he depicts here.

[selenesedits]

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH

[crashtestjeffy-deactivated20240]

All amazing points and so important to take in. I think I have done a couple of these, but not habitually or intensely. But it's good awareness for me.

[marisatomay]

Happy Pride

[oshun67]

Older Black gay men in long term relationships are rarely covered or seen by main stream media.

[snoozy-red-panda]

Here’s the article, very well worth the read

[wholesomepostarchive]

10/13/2022

[daysleftofsecondterm]

958 days left

[lilyflxwers]

ok i absolutely need to know what accents u all have pls reblog and tell me or comment or whatever I must know

[scribeherself]

I think one of the gentlest things in the world is when a friend just gets your weird little brain. like you say half a sentence and they finish it. you reference something incredibly niche from seven years ago and they’re already nodding. they understand your strange vocabulary for emotions that don’t have real words yet. it’s being seen and known and still loved. maybe especially because you’re known. god. what a gift.

[catty-words]

hacks is a show ultimately concerned with the interaction between material circumstances and the making of art. talent management being the b-plot stars of the show so the audience is forced to contend with the gears of the industry and not just the shiny finished product, deborah starting her journey in a place of material comfort but artistic stagnation, and the constant tension surrounding who most controls deborah's legacy - be it male executives, the media in their pockets, deborah's past naiveté, or deborah and her team - all contribute to a pervading sense that artistic expression is a hellish endeavor, at least if you want to do it well and sell a worthwhile product to an audience. there will be unfair constraints and devastating setbacks, and sometimes meeting that pressure head-on forces the best possible art from the artist.

having deborah ready to meet death with grace and certainty throughout the finale serves this theme so well. we've watched her toil again and again to reach new heights of creative expression, watched her set goals and meet them despite those who stood in her way. she'd be leaving the mortal coil personally and artistically fulfilled. there are no more mountains of material circumstances to climb, no more puppets of villainous misogyny to circumvent. may she rest on her laurels in perpetuity.

and yet.

deborah having a moment where she realizes that, regardless of the bigness of the creation, she's not ready to step away from the creative process subverts our expectation of her ultimate need. being an artist, at its base, is not about control or grandiosity or how long or short of a cultural shadow you cast. art is about seeing other people. it's about seeing yourself.

tinkering with her art suffuses deborah's life with meaning. of course her story ends with her alive! there's no material circumstance in the world - not even the inevitability of an end - that could stand in the way of art being made, experienced, and enriching everyone involved in its process.