this place isn’t haunted it is the ghost

TIL that in medieval times trebuchets were sometimes used during tournaments to bombard the watching ladies with roses, and there is something so inherently comedic about this to me. picture me blasting roses at my lover's window with the force of a battlefield assault to win her hand

straight white people making a romance movie: haha what if it was illegal to have sex? wait what's lawrence v texas. wait what's mclaughlin v florida. wait what's loving v virginia

can y’all maybe reblog this version i feel like people are forgetting about the racism and just focusing on the homophobia

who up wasting their only shot at life through complete and utter inaction

this is NOT about not being productive, i cannot believe how many people in the notes are telling me that pursuing hobbies isn't a waste of time i KNOW that. what i mean by "complete and utter inaction" is doing nothing. not only am i not being productive or pursuing any goals, i'm also not doing any of the myriad things i know would bring me joy. i'm not doing hobbies, i'm not hanging out with friends, i'm just sitting around rotting away for no discernible reason

Watching any Shakespeare play for the first time is always fun because you get to find out where another 5% of the famous quotes and figures of speech you've ever heard come from.

I do wish people in this fandom particularly on the Leftist Website TM really understood how deeply homophobia has shaped public perception of Batman and how the comics themselves have been shaped by that in turn. I grew up being teased on the playground for liking Batman because that's gay. The Christmas before this one I sat down to eat with a friend's family and in a conversation where we were jokingly saying "oh yeah he's a freak (positive)" about Batman this friend's dad (a man in his fifties who ostensibly likes Batman) responded very earnestly "well of course he's a freak, he's in that big house alone with those little boys". Batman comics tried to minimize Robin and make Batman a harsher character in direct response to the theory of acquired homosexuality spread during the Lavender Scare which posits that all gay men are child predators which means that any man who presents as not stereotypically masculine and isn't married to a woman is inherently a danger to male children (who will then become gay men/child predators themselves) which is a concept that persists TO THIS DAY. Can anyone hear me!!

There are ten trillion pictures of flowering trees to the point where they sometimes seem trite and overdone. But then you see a tree in full flower and go holy shit this rules and I've gotta show this to everyone so they can experience the same magic and wonder and there are ten trillion and one pictures of flowering trees

the "language is a social construct, therefore linguistic misinformation is impossible. any claim about language is true if enough people say it is" misconception is of course annoying when applied to stuff like grammar because it's wrong in a nuanced way that's important to explain correctly to avoid spreading even worse ideas about language. but with etymology it's like. no that's not even the part of language that's a social construct, you're making a claim about history. this is something that you really shouldn't think you can just make up

language changes over time but a popular tumblr post claiming that a figure of speech from the bible is actually the short version of its own comeback isn't language changing

btw one of the main tells for false etymology posts online is that they often are presented as something the poster "realized", as opposed to "learned". as though historical facts about how language has evolved are things that you can figure out on your own by thinking about words hard enough

The Byzantine Empire, that is.

Oh FUCK

My eyes have just fallen out of my head because of this gorgeous fabric.

Because one can never get enough visuals of medieval clothing …

it is possible for every adult around to have once been the crying baby on the bus or that sick kid who threw up everywhere and they didn't get mobbed to death by annoyed adults because we don't do that. actually the public space and society itself belongs to everyone inside it, including people who you feel are inconveniencing you

even people who try to live out an off-the-grid self sustainable life got this far through the care of other people. it is impossible to extract yourself as an individual from the web of social connections that exist in humanity, and thus any argument against being likewise responsible to shared human need isn't worthwhile. "i didn't have a choice to be born tho" yeah and now you don't have a choice again, you must put up with children and disabled people regardless of your silly little thoughts

trying to speed-run through some eps of my rewatch rn so I’m not doing proper live-blogging but will circle back and write some thoughts later but. It’s very interesting to me how in 2x10 sam is so insistent on roping Ava into things and when she wants to walk away and forget abt things and return to her “normal life” sam is like “you really don’t want to know the Truth abt who you are???” and he really pushes the whole “we’re connected!!” thing. And like, I get it. He doesn’t want to feel alone in all this. He wants to connect with these other ppl that are like him. But it’s just interesting to me how in previous episodes and on other cases sam sort of laments having to tell people abt the supernatural and wishes they could “stay innocent” and oblivious to what’s out there. But here he’s so set on telling Ava everything and shattering the illusions of her perfect life. And if feels a bit like sam is projecting his own fears and wishes onto her. Like HE wishes he’d known abt all this stuff sooner. HE feels like he was out of the loop abt things and now thinks well EYE would have wanted to know so I must tell this woman everything. And he had his “normal life” shattered by the supernatural (though it’s interesting to note that Sam himself refers to his life in california as trying to “run” from his destiny. To which dean promptly says FUCK DESTINY.) Anyways, how Sam acts with Ava, felt to me like he was projecting and treating her like HE would want to be treated but not considering what she might actually want. And he just seemed so desperate to connect with her, esp after all the other special children he met so far either died or wanted nothing to do with him. And it’s just an interesting shift, where before sam might’ve wanted to preserve people’s normal apple pie lives now he’s seeing “normal” as escapism and not real and he’s prioritizing the need of Knowing and the Truth abt what’s out there

okay and now in 2x12 Sam is like "no we can't tell ronald the truth. he's safer not knowing abt the supernatural." like truly he just wanted another Special Child to bond with and suffer with so he NEEDED to tell ava everything for HIS sake

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

gonna be honest i don’t know how many more ‘enter the 6 digit code we sent to your phone’s i got left in me

okay but chess terminology is like. you pinned your opponent's hung knight and now you can mate? oh im sure