[nobrashfestivity]

Masahisa Fukase, Yoko, 1974

Fukase almost exclusively photographed his wife, Yoko, for 13 years until their breakup, afterwards obsessively photographing ravens,as symbols of his grief.

Fukase died in 2012,  having been in a coma for 20 years following a near-fatal fall down the stairs of his favorite bar in 1992. Yoko visited him twice a month throughout his long limbo – though, heartbreakingly, he would have been unaware of her presence.

more

[andwhatexcellentboiledpotatoes]

Current Reductress headlines

[discardingimages]

saints

Hours of Louis de Laval, France ca. 1480

BnF, Latin 920, fol. 180r

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

‘Pike Pika Antifascista’

[1eos]

its funny that homophobes want to say that sex nd marriage is btwn cis men nd cis women bc their bodies were ‘made for each other’ lmao vaginas literally force sperm to suffer thru acid nd then the cervix deploys troops to kill more sperm then it has to do a 700 meter sprint up the fallopian tubes like bro if anything we made to be gay 😭😭😭😭😭

[1eos]

sperm: h-

vaginas:

[olmluvr]

if you know a trans persons deadname no you dont <3

[promethes]

hey! are there particular aave words that a white person like me should be mindful of that i might not realize are aave (but have been popularized by social media)? sorry if this question is obnoxious at all!! a google search just seemed unproductive for current vernacular/colloquialisms and i didn't know if there are a couple particularly overused words beyond like what you tagged w finna

Right now, aave is so entwined with social culture and “internet speak” that there really is no way to police (for lack of better words) the use of it. It has worked its way into the way we talk, and it would be unreasonable to ask people to just stop using words and phrases that are now part of everyone’s vocabulary.

That being said, the primary issues I have with the way aave is used on the internet are:

a) people don’t even know what the word that they’re saying means and have no idea how it even works in the sentence. I’m sure you’ve all seen a few posts floating around about how aave has its own rules to follow and isn’t just throwing in random words and “bad grammar”. This is how you end up with the misuse of words like “finna” (the example I stated in the tags, “I’m gonna finna”, makes absolutely no sense), “chile”, “tea”, “asf”, “be”, etc. The misuse alone is already weird in and of itself, but it also indicates that the people using it do not actually have those words in their vocabulary and are using them to mimic certain patterns of writing they see on the internet. Many of these patterns, of course, are stereotypical caricatures of the “sassy black woman”. So the people who misuse these words are doing it for shock value, in a way saying “haha look at me I’m so sassy and cool right now,” completely disrespecting people who actually incorporate aave (the CORRECT way) into the way they speak, boiling them down into a template to use whenever you want to seem sassy and culture savvy on the internet. For more examples (and a good laugh), I suggest searching up “aave struggle tweets”.

b) it’s becoming increasingly obvious (especially here on tumblr) that people lean on aave to show aggression. Very often you will see users who type the way they normally speak slip into aave mode when they are angry or in an argument and/or trying to “throw shade”. Why do they do this? The most obvious answer is that they associate aave (and Blackness itself) with anger and aggression. This directly ties into the stereotypes of Black people being violent, aggressive, loud, and angry. By heavily relying on and using aave to convey your negative emotions, it subconsciously enforces those stereotypes in both your mind and the minds of your readers.

I suppose the best way to avoid this is to be conscious of what you’re saying and why you’re saying it. If you find yourself using “internet” language, especially words that aren’t in your regular vocabulary, ask yourself 1) “do I know what I’m saying? or am I just using a word that I’ve seen floating around and vaguely understand?” and 2) “why am I choosing to use this language in this post at this moment in time? do I have a pattern of relying on it in specific instances? what role does it play in my post that I couldn’t use my normal speech patterns to do?”

Basically, think before you post and don’t use aave as a gimmick.

[stormysapphic]

Tove Jansson painting the fresco Party in the Countryside, Helsinki, 1947

[of-foolish-and-wise]

oh, to be the owner of a small bookshop on a cobblestone street with roses climbing the front of the building, where books are stacked about in piles and there’s always coffee brewing and a sleepy shop dog lifts his head at the sound of the door’s bell and thumps his tail against the hardwood

[thenewmi6]

the oft unspoken truth of society is that the line between quirky and cringy is often how conventionally attractive you are

[mildlydiscouraging]

Art + Chilling on a Green Sofa

“He is lounging on the olive green velvet sofa with two patterned pillows. Very focused in. (No eliminations.) Very French. Also a bit, alas, Sargent.”

— Joe Brainard, letter to Fairfield Porter, 1973

Ramon Casas, “Jove decadent. Després del ball” (1899) / Joe Brainard, “Whippoorwill” (1973) / John Singer Sargent, “Nonchaloir (Repose)” (1911) / Salman Toor, “East Village Apartment II” (2017) / Joe Brainard, “Untitled (Whippet on Green Couch)” (1973) / John Lavery, “The Green Sofa” (c. 1903)

[heartwrench]

me, whenever anyone says anything

[bcnnibeau-deactivated20200330]

we really devolved as a society when we stopped using fully painted pictures on romance novels and started using cheap photoshop instead 

[bcnnibeau-deactivated20200330]

case in point

this is a Hell of a downgrade 

[garbage-empress]

worst crime capitalism ever committed was eliminating Horny Oil Painter as a viable career option.

[wortcunter-deactivated20200902]

the overwhelming desire to just exist without having to prove one’s worth in the false world of commodity and personality production

[aqqindex]

Suzanne Lipschutz House

[a-state-of-bliss]

Vogue Deutsch Oct 2005 - Erin O’Connor by Koto Bolofo

[quotemadness]

“So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.”

— Rainbow Rowell