burst & decay

in a world that i can't fix with a hammer in my fist, i'm no closer to heaven.

[a3n3g3el]

who knows ? (2020)

[thetalesofbasingse]

[brightlotusmoon]

[hotboyproblems]

me @ my body: perhaps… since it’s summer… you could sleep without the blanket?

my body: interesting thought! interesting thought. but no

[thegaylists]

films with gay black main characters

Blackbird - (2014, dir. Patrick-Ian Polk) Drama adpatation of the novel by Larry Duplechan. It follows Randy, a devoutely Baptist gay teenager struggling with his sexuality and religion.

Moonlight - (2016, dir. Barry Jenkins) coming of age drama film telling the life of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami, told in three stages; his youth, adolescence, and early adult life. It explores his sexuality, identity, and the ramifications of the abuse he endured growing up. Janelle Monae made her film debut in this and it also became both the first film with an all black cast & the first lgbt film to win the oscar for best picture.

Naz & Maalik - (2015, dir. Jay Dockendorf) drama film following two closeted muslim teenage boys in Brooklyn during one summer afternoon as their secretive (read: closeted gay) behavior sets a FBI agent on their trail. After both boys give her two different excuses for their behavior, they worry about being outed to their families.

Noah’s Arc: Jumping the broom - (2008, dir. Patrick-Ian Polk) Comedy based off the tv series “Noah’s Arc” follows Noah and Wade as they invite their friends along for an insane weekend before they marry at Martha’s Vineyard.

Pariah - (2011, dir. Dee Rees) art drama film telling the story of Alike, a 17 year old black girl as she slowly but surely comes to terms with being a butch lesbian while her parents relationship is falling apart. As her mother begins to grow suspicious about her daughter’s sexuality, she forces Alike into feminine clothing and pushes her to make friends with a respectable young girl from her church.

Rafiki - (2018, dir. Wanuri Kahiu) Kenyan romantic drama film centering on two Kenyan lesbian teenagers, Ziki and Kena. It explores their blossoming love and friendship as they face poltical and familial pressure to follow a path of life they arent really suited for. The film has mostly been premiering in festivals and isnt available for streaming in the US/UK yet but once its out this is a very important, groundbreaking film that we all need to be supporting!

Set it Off - (1996, dir. F. Gary Gray) Crime action film about four close friends who decide to rob a bank for different reasons, but all with the goal to better life for themselves and the ones they love. The character Queen Latifah plays is a butch lesbian! 

The Happy Sad - (2013, dir. Rodney Evans) Drama film following the lives of two very different couples in New York City. The first, two gay black men who’ve been together for awhile and decided to try to turn their relationship into an open one. The second, a het white couple who decide to take a break and end up experimenting with same-sex sexual encounters. 

The Skinny - (2012, dir. Patrick-Ian Polk) Rom-com telling the story of five Brown University classmates as they reunite in NYC for gay pride weekend. Four are gay men, and one is a lesbian woman. Magnus is a medical student in a happy relationship with his boyfriend, Langston is a Yale PhD student, Sebastian just came back from a year in Paris, Kyle is uh…slutty, and Joey’s witty as hell. 

The Wound - (2017, dir. John Trengove) Alternatively titled Inxeba, The Wound is a South African drama film following the secret relationship between two men during the Xhosa ritual of Ulwaluko, an initiation into manhood. 

[whitepeopletwitter]

[ghostsandgoblins]

[sarenderpity]

Friendly reminder that if you shake hands with a guy you shouldn’t eat or touch your face until you’ve washed your hands.

[sarenderpity]

this isnt some Feminist Joke, btw, they basically teach this in food safety since so many guys think its fine to not wash their hands after they’ve touched their dick

[briannatheloner]

You can be anything. Representation Matters

[saintcranky]

Or a god.

[animatedamerican]

or a superhero

or a gunslinger

or a gunslinger and a queen

or a princess and a warrior and a scientist

[calis-discourse]

WE CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH BLACK POSITIVITY ON THIS SITE

[blkpolyweedbrohunting4goddesses]

✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿

[cerulean-beekeeper-deactivated2]

Or a genius hacker

[elandrialore]

Or Captain America

Or the woman who walked the earth

[urparty]

covid19 is exposing that everything we think is real like money and politicians and celebrities is totally made up and the things that actually are real like human compassion and social consciousness and love are genuinely necessary for survival

[rubyvroom]

Can I watch a great film knowing the actresses in it were terrorized and mistreated the entire time? Can I watch a football game knowing that the players are getting brain injuries right before my eyes? Can I listen to my favorite albums anymore knowing that the singers were all beating their wives in between studio sessions? Can I eat at the new fancy taco place knowing when the building that used to be there got bulldozed eight families got kicked out of their homes so they could be replaced with condos and a chain restaurant? Can I wear the affordable clothes I bought downtown that were probably assembled in a sweatshop with child labor? Can I eat quinoa? Can I eat this burger? Can I drink this bottled water? Can I buy a car and drive to work because I’m sick of taking an hour each way on the subway? Whose bones do I stand on? Whose bones am I standing on right now? 

[moniquill]

[dearydeerling-deactivated201904]

On one hand, it’s a privilege to be able to choose to acknowledge these horrors or not–we’re going to acknowledge that privilege. On the other hand, I once attended a lecture by the explorerer-conservationist Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s daughter and son and they had a lot of opinions about what we could do to help the environment and the ocean and I talked about how in my country, we have to drink bottled water, because it’s a desert and there’s only salt water all around, but we’re contributing to pollution and all of these things…

And she looked at me and told me not to fall into the trap of “activist guilt.” I couldn’t remember the exact words, but, it was the first time I’d heard the term and it took a weight off my shoulders.

We do what we can. It’s so much better than giving up entirely or not doing anything at all because we can’t do it perfectly. It doesn’t benefit anyone in the end if we just sit around feeling guilty about every little thing in life. I’d just joined tumblr back then (haha, so like, eight or nine years ago at this point?), I was being exposed to way more than I’d ever been before (I was previously just into feminism and animal rights/wildlife conservation/environmentalism since I was a kid), and it was weighing on me.

As long as humans are humans and living flawed lives, many consumed by greed, there will not be anything in this world untouched by evil.

I usually avoid stuff that says it was made in China or other cheap looking knockoffs, out of fear of them being made in sweatshops (now, I know even a lot of big brands use those…), it’s exhausting. Then, I read something about how people who actually lived and worked in those would still buy this cheap stuff and how this shocked the foreigner reporting on it, but they just looked confused like, it’s what they can afford and them avoiding consuming it isn’t going to change the whole system from the ground-up.

… it went on about how “money talks” and choosing where to put your money still feeds the whole capitalist system and is nearly a way of comforting yourself, but you not buying doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t. What needs to be tackled is at a much higher level than any of us can reach.

Of course, I’d still, given the choice, give my money to companies I agree with and I’ll boycott what I know to support awful stuff, but I also feel no superiority over this and know now it’s not as black and white or easy as I thought it was.

This is the same reason that moral purity “you can’t enjoy [x] because it’s Problematic ™” is such nonsense, because nothing is pure. There’s something bad about everything if you dig deep enough. As long as we lived in flawed human societies we’ve got to make the best of what they offer us. If you have the choice and means, please, do support those who do good, but also, don’t beat yourself up over not living up to an unattainable ideal.

No one can. You’ll just make yourself so miserable, you either burn up and stop fighting entirely or you’ll make yourself a non-productive, depressed heap just out of a bleeding heart left unchecked. You can’t make a change to this world if you refuse to engage in it.

Have a related article with self-care tips for activists.

[catvincent]

Purity is one of the worst, most harmful myths humans ever invented.

[vickytokio]

Rebloging for this amazing reply telling us how to actually handle this, because yeah, sometimes I’ll simply shut down trying to find something that doesn’t cause harm to anyone

[lesbinewren]

i know im bouncing around topics today but military recruitment ads that are clearly modeled off of video game ads make my blood boil

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

#i cant quite vocalize why exactly it bothers me but yall know

Oooh, I can! It’s the implied dehumanization of enemy combatants, transparent attempt at preying on the young and vulnerable, and insufferable toxic masculinity that assumes that all war is justified and fun!

[destielle]

[clubdreamm-deactivated20210114]

[aangmarble]

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” Recap Cartoon → Book One

[aangarchy]

ZUKO KILLED MEEEEEE

[tami-taylors-hair]

The big discourse on twitter right now is ‘you can’t say Columbus was a racist monster because no one knew racism was bad in 1492,’ except Isabella I (yeah, that Isabella I) threw his ass in prison for being a racist monster. There are multiple contemporaneous accounts of Columbus in the Caribbean that are basically like “holy shit, this guy is a legit, Texas chainsaw massacre psychopath.” He was considered bad even then.

When there’s documentation that the queen who got the Spanish Inquisition rolling thought Columbus was bad, I feel like it means we can all feel good about establishing another holiday for mattress discounts in this country.

[kereeachan]

Yep. Contemporaneous accounts of him and De Soto often have the writer essentially going “what the FUCK are you doing, why are you like this.” People AT THE TIME knew it was fucked up just fine.

[citizen-zero]

His crew wanted to mutiny and kill the man and we are all worse off for the fact that they didn’t.

[trilobiter]

In 1511, only 19 years after Columbus’s first voyage, a Dominican friar named Antonio de Montesinos said this to the Spanish colonists on Hispaniola:

“Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dwelt quietly and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before. Why do you keep them so oppressed and exhausted, without giving them enough to eat or curing them of the sicknesses they incur from the excessive labor you give them, and they die, or rather you kill them, in order to extract and acquire gold every day.”

“Racism” was an unknown word (coined in the early 20th century) and perhaps a difficult concept to explain to 15th and 16th century Europeans. But they were fully capable of understanding that marching into some one’s country, and then immediately killing and enslaving them, was wrong. The fact that they did it any way is their own responsibility, and it’s not inappropriate for us to judge them for it.

[queeranarchism]

This is why it matters so much not just which history we tell, but from with perspectives. The fact that the perspectives of the many contemporaries who recognized Columbus as a disgusting racist and tried to stop him are not in our history books is a choice that was made a long way back by people who wanted to continue being racist and loving Columbus.

[thewondertears]

did you have a different username before?

yeah i was palmreadercas! but i’m back as a non-fandom specific blog, hence the new user