aesthetic of the day is "isn't it exciting to realize you know better"
literally just quoted this to describe Yves Saint Laurent's iconic S/S 1971 "Liberation" collection.

izzy's playlists!

shark vs the universe

Origami Around
Sweet Seals For You, Always
tumblr dot com
ojovivo

blake kathryn
Show & Tell

oozey mess
we're not kids anymore.

No title available
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

tannertan36
trying on a metaphor

roma★

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Today's Document
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

if i look back, i am lost

★

seen from United States

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@stillruthless
aesthetic of the day is "isn't it exciting to realize you know better"
literally just quoted this to describe Yves Saint Laurent's iconic S/S 1971 "Liberation" collection.
Lilo & Stitch + Live Action Reference
I could watch this forever!
A live action Lilo & Stich could be lit, depending on what a live action Stich and all the other creations would look like.
I love!!!!
idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com
this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there
k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:
1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?
because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.
Okay sure, but if this is the case, then why couldn’t the teachers just let me pick my own books to read and analyze? All of those “classic” books we were assigned were so mindnumbingly boring (and dangerously depressing for a teen who was already sad most days), and I didn’t understand half the time what the teacher wanted me to learn, so I barely skimmed the reading and BS’d my way through my essays because I didn’t see the point. “The teacher says [this thing] symbolizes [this idea], so I guess that’s the right answer” was my whole high school existence. If they had just let me read and analyze MY OWN BOOKS, I would have had a much easier time grasping this. The only thing school taught me was how to ace a multiple choice test even when I didn’t bother to study the material.
idk, maybe if you actually developed that reading comprehension i speak of you’d understand why everyone else in the world makes fun of people who say things like “i’m a grown adult and i still think it’s very unfair that my teachers made me read books with literary and cultural value,” but don’t worry, i bet there’s just as much literary merit in good omens fanfiction
Hi high school English teacher here. Canon is just another form of systematically oppressive BS; I mean let’s think about it - who determines what is and isn’t canon? I personally have always hated most of it and have often let students choose their own books to analyze, especially when I have struggling readers. How are they gonna learn how to do the skill without being handheld without the motivation to try on their own?
Did this post NOT start with the idea that the point is to learn how to parse out layers of meaning? You can sure as fuck do that with fanfic or contemporary books or whatever you want. Where’s that long post of deep quotes from fanfic and videogames when you need it?
The only value I see in studying the canon is understanding what other people knew and referenced and you don’t need that to do what this post is talking about.
yeah, no, i’m not buying this argument. i’m pretty critical of the canon but the solution isn’t to throw the whole thing out, it’s to broaden our parameters for which works are deemed culturally significant, diversify the canon, and teach it in ways that challenge the traditional interpretations. but lit written before the 21st century has value in and of itself, even beyond the practical applications i mentioned in this post.
first of all, “understanding what other people knew and referenced” is a fundamental part of media literacy that does directly impact your ability to recognize bias, stereotypes, and other devices that reinforce structural oppression. even a basic understanding of literary traditions in the western canon will make you a more informed and enlightened media consumer in 2020, because those traditions inform everything that gets made today, including fanfic and video games. understanding the context in which modern media exists is ESSENTIAL to understanding both authorial intent and authorial bias. to use an easy example, most kids don’t pick up on the antisemitic overtones of the gringotts goblins in harry potter because they’re kids and they have no context of the historical portrayal of jews as money-handlers - that’s why we still teach the merchant of venice and the canterbury tales and oliver twist, to build up that historical context for those specific themes and imagery. contemporary media is rife with offensive stereotypes dating back hundreds of years, but audiences will continue to passively consume them if they don’t actually know that they’re stereotypes.
secondly, understanding the timeline of literary movements and genres help us understand shifts in cultural values over the years, because at its core, writing is just one of the ways humans make sense of the world around us. studying history teaches you what happened, and studying literature teaches you how people reacted to it. similarly, movements and genres develop in response to each other as well as the world around them. contemporary writers don’t just invent completely new ideas out of nowhere; they’re building on established traditions, and being able to draw those connections heightens the experience of reading contemporary lit. historical context informs the themes and literary devices and themes and narrative structures an individual author chooses to tell their story just as much as their own personal experiences and beliefs and position in their culture’s power structure.
there is no such thing as a book that exists in a vacuum. the genre of climate fiction is for the most part a 21st century development that has grown out of sci-fi and speculative fiction that reflects our contemporary fears and anxieties about climate change, but it has roots in how the romantics reacted to the uncertainty of industrialization and modernity by emphasizing the terrifying power of the natural world. it also builds on themes of exploitation and subjugation common in feminist literature and the postcolonial movement. contemporary american climate fiction specifically exists within the context of our history of slavery and genocide and the manifest destiny doctrine, as well as the severe economic inequality we live with today, and you see those elements embedded throughout the genre’s landscape, both in form and content. and so when you pick up n.k. jemisin’s the fifth season or chelsea bieker’s godshot or tochi onyebuchi’s war girls, you’re reading a book that would not exist if it were not for the last 250 years of social upheaval and industrialization and colonialism and technological advancement and all the other books that were written along the way, and being able to recognize all those contributing factors makes reading a much, much richer experience in the end.
and frankly, fiction sparks empathy in ways that textbooks can’t, even the books we typically think of as dusty old white man “classics.” i wasn’t psyched about reading all quiet on the western front in high school, because wwi was boring from my 15-year-old southern california perspective (i vividly remember characterizing it as “just a bunch of guys in trenches and the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand”), but i came away from it with a visceral sense of horror, understanding how young those guys in trenches were and how much psychological damage they were left with after the war. some books belong in the canon because, taught effectively, they force students to step outside of their own perspectives and experience the world from the subjective perspective of someone in a time and place they’ll never experience. our schools typically teach history from an objective perspective, but students, especially teenagers, need the subjective. they need a human connection, not just statistics. the value of night, the bluest eye, and the grapes of wrath, among others, doesn’t just come from the quality of their prose, but from their effectiveness at making that connection. that’s why the canon has expanded so much over the past several decades! we need a much larger canon, not a smaller one!
i mean, otherwise, what’s the point of studying the arts and humanities at all? any quote can sound deep out of context. the goal is not simply to be able to analyze a quote, it’s to be able to place that quote in the context of the source text, and then place that source in the context of the rest of that moment or movement in literature, and then place that literary moment in the context of its historical period, and then to finally place that period in the context of the whole history of the world, and do it all with moral clarity and empathy for the oppressed. because that is going to be the framework through which you view every political, economic, philosophical, and moral choice you make for the rest of your life.
we already live in a world where kids grow up being told that “the classics” are dense and boring and irrelevant, and i’m sure that most students, if given the choice to skip them altogether and only read fun, easy, popular stuff, they would! but that doesn’t mean it’s good for them. you don’t grow if you aren’t being challenged. and because students come in already primed to think the most of these books are stupid and pointless, the onus is on teachers to make them engaging through whatever framework meets the needs of their classroom. english teachers need to give students the tools to challenge narratives that reinforce oppression by actively teaching books from an oppositional viewpoint, even if it means openly saying “you know why we’re reading this? because it’s offensive and it sucks.” help them find the throughlines that connect to kill a mockingbird to their eyes were watching god to the hate u give, or lord of the flies and 1984 and the handmaid’s tale and the hunger games. make discussions and assignments about proving an understanding, not just regurgitating information. there’s a clear middle ground between teaching goethe to fourth graders and never challenging students to read outside of their comfort zone at all.
look, harold bloom is dead and there’s no reason to only teach the books he considered the canon, but also, “the canon” isn’t just one dead white man’s static creation. it’s a dynamic, collective concept that is evolving along with our values as a culture. some texts lose relevance over time, others gain it. understanding the world in 2020 requires a much different reading list than it did in the 18th and 19th centuries. i don’t think anyone outside of the most conservative people in academia would advocate for a closed canon that doesn’t continuously expand to include voices that have historically been excluded from the literary establishment, or perspectives that challenge the views ingrained in us by oppressive power structures. but that’s significantly different from just saying “the concept of a canon is oppressive so we shouldn’t have one at all.” sometimes we just read books because they’re important and they teach us something valuable that will make us smarter and more empathetic and better at calling bullshit. i don’t really know what else to say, man.
cobie smulders really just came to save quarantine with a ‘let’s all stay at home’ remix of ‘let’s go to the mall’
Sometimes u just have to read a Mary Oliver poem & hope to god u will survive the week
y’all: my love language is ‘words of affirmation’!
me, an intellectual: praise kink
i see y'all liking this but not reblogging y'all are COWARDS
Heartbreaking scene from the film
Schindler’s List (1993)
OK LEMME TELL YOU STRAIGHT UP ABOUT OSKAR SCHINDLER. Everyone knows the story, right? His protected workers? How none of his ammo worked? The full story is a lot more complex and a hell of a lot more breathtaking.
He wasn’t a saint. in fact, he was a bit of a douche, all things considered. Whored around on his wife, worked for the Abwehr, he was a member of the nazi party - not a particularly devout follower, but because he was a big fat remora fish who realised this particular shark could give him business opportunities, and if he wined and dined the upper crust that scored him even better ones. He realised very quickly he could make an absolute killing on the black market and dove in headfirst with the profiteering. Hell, he initially hired Jews in his factory because nazi strictures made them much much cheaper labour than hiring normal Polish labourers.
But the thing is, once you start surrounding yourself with a particular, persecuted demographic, you begin to notice things. You hear things, things you aren’t insulated from. You begin to realise something.
And Oskar Schindler began to dimly grasp what was happening and he realised that it was not something he could countenance. And his whole gameplay changed. He no longer wined and dined for business opportunities, but to protect his workers. He went flat out fucking balls to the wall to rescue a group of his workers from the jaws of Auschwitz, and built them a “camp” that offered at least the barest of human comforts, right under SS supervision. He moved his entire fucking factory to save his workers, he realised an SS-provided list of names was left with blank spaces and just started filling in more. He blew everything he had made profiteering and scheming to protect 1200 people because he found that there was a fucking line and it had to be drawn. He arranged for three thousand Jewish women to be moved to textile factories in the Sudetenland to give them a chance of surviving the war. He blew all his money, resources and time on feeding, caring for and trying to protect as many Jews as he could.
After the war he failed every business venture he tried. He became a raging alcoholic, surviving on donations sent by Schindlerjuden. According to some, he traded the ring gifted to him by his workers for Schnapps. He died in relative obscurity, almost penniless.
He wasn’t a great man, or a saint. He was an average schmuck, and spent most of his time fucking around until he abruptly found himself in a situation where he couldn’t. He almost stumbled into his decency. But once he had, he absolutely took hold of it, and directly because of him 8,500 people are alive today.
Never, ever doubt the ability of a single human to RISE.
This guy is Giorgio Perlasca.
He started out a fascist. Right from the beginning. He fought in East Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and in the Spanish Civil War. He was awarded a diplomatic mission from fucking Francisco Franco.
Then, he starts noticing things he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like how close to Nazis they’re getting. And then, in 1938, racial laws against Jewish people are passed in Italy and that is when he realizes that fascism is a pile of shit, and that he fucked up, but at that point he’s in too deep. He had a duty to his country, he thought, and worked to aid the army. What else could he do?
As it turns out, a lot.
On 8 September 1943, Italy surrenders to the Allied forces. Italians had to choose whether to join the fascist Italian Social Republic or side with the Allies. He chooses the latter and, due to his status as a veteran in the Spanish Civil War, he obtains political asylum at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest, changing his name in ‘Jorge’.
That could have been the end of it for him. He could have stayed safe and comfortable until the end of the war. He did not.
Perlasca worked with the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states to smuggle Jews out of Hungary. The system he devised consisted of furnishing ‘protection cards’ which placed Jews under the guardianship of various neutral states. He helped Jews find refuge in protected houses under the control of various embassies, which had extraterritorial conventions that gave them an equivalent to sovereignty. They could provide asylum for Jews.
When Sanz Briz was removed from Hungary to Switzerland in November 1944, he invited Perlasca to accompany him to safety. However, Perlasca chose to remain in Hungary. The Hungarian government ordered the Spanish Embassy building and the extraterritorial houses where the Jews took refuge to be cleared out. Perlasca immediately made the false announcement that Sanz Briz was due to return from a short leave, and that he had been appointed his deputy for the meantime.
Throughout the winter, Perlasca was active in hiding, shielding and feeding thousands of Jews in Budapest. He continued issuing safe conduct passes (initiated by Sanz Briz), on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that granted citizenship to Jews of Sephardic origin (descendants of Iberian Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century).
In December 1944, Perlasca rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene. The Swedish diplomat-rescuer Raoul Wallenberg, also present there, later told Perlasca that the officer who had challenged him was Adolf Eichmann. During 45 days period from 1 December 1944 to 16 January 1945, Perlasca helped save more than 5,000 Jews.
After the war, he returned to Italy and lived a quiet life. He told no one what had had done in Hungary - not even to his wife, who got the shock of her life when a group of Hungarian Jews finally found him in 1987, only five years before his death. When asked why he’d done what he did he just answered - “What would you have done in my place?”
He started out a fascist. He became of one the Righteous Among the Nations.
You don’t have to be a saint. You may have been on the wrong side. You may have made choices that are bad and stupid and just plain wrong. You don’t necessarily have to even be that good a person. But sometimes it comes down to one choice and one choice only and sometimes, despite everything, you just do the right thing.
They are called the Righteous for a reason. Not because they were saints (most weren’t), but because they were able to see wrong in the world where others looked past it, and not only refused to be party to it, but opposed it with their lives. We are all capable of Righteousness.
The Skincare Routine of Dorian Gray
Where’s the link op
Right here!
Seamus Finnigan meets the Derry Girls.
Derry Girls and the Harry Potter books both take place in the 90s so this is very plausible.
au where pennywise appears in derry, northern ireland instead of derry, maine. IT’s just the derry girls beating the shit out of a clown.
Here you go, heathens. This is what happens when a group of 150 music teachers sight-read something truly ridiculous
@clamavipaucaslacrimas @anerdrunsthroughher
@not-likethat for when you return 😬
Can confirm this is something we would have done in music school.
Goalkeepers’ balls get photoshopped into cats.
This is so natural. Like i didn’t question it
this is simply the greatest video i have ever seen
I'm going to reblog this a million times so be it
I wanna hear these Opinions on steampunk color palettes, if you’re willing.
tbh “the Victorians did not go to the trouble of inventing aniline dyes so that we could wear neutrals” mostly covers it?
they went to a lot of effort to bring affordable screaming bright fuchsias and acid greens into the world, and we should honor their tacky, tacky choices.
let’s not forget the tacky patterns, too
oh yeah
oh fuck yeah
(TELL ME that last one isn’t a steampunk look. just try and tell me)
yes! thank you, these are EXACTLY what i meant. tomorrow I’ll take a picture of the bafflingly tacky goldenrod-and-maroon gown I’ve got at the shop
also
this is wise, and correct.
This is 100% true.
Hopelessly amused by Henry VIII + Taylor Swift lyrics
bonus
The Pope on excommunicating Henry:
via buzzfeed
@books-and-cookies something tells me you might appreciate this
@royalrory
this is true love y’all (x) | follow @the-movemnt
😂
❤️
pls let this be the start of a trend
retweet this and your dream job will come into your life
ok y'all this is crazy i reblogged this today and i just got offered a job. what the fuck
Worked last year. Give it a whirl, kids.
This works. I know that sounds like a lie, but I reblogged it last year & whew. It was a good luck charm