It's only a Paper Moon...

“liking something in fiction doesn’t mean you condone it in real life” but instead of dark fanfiction tropes it’s about liking jeeves and wooster while being a socialist

it is my hope and dream that everyone on tumblr can go outside and visit a gay bar or go to a queer event and see that our community is very beautiful and very diverse and that half the internet discourse isn’t real

worst part about getting angry is how much it makes you want to be mean

sorry i said something dickish. a few mildly frustrating things happened to me in succession and it turned me evil

How many times can the same thing break your heart?

As long as you love it.

“as long as you love it” this really hit me

"goddess" "matriarchy" "female wisdom" girl your civic rights

ok yes the misplaced nostalgic yearning for a mythical past is clearly a reactionary position, but simply flipping the valences and replying that Everything Back Then Was Worse Actually is just as superficial an engagement with history

the presumption of progress over time misleads with respect to the vast amount of variation in the historical record & it also serves to present whatever is the current arrangement as the apotheosis of human advancement... these are not value-neutral claims

Twitter users are defending their right to assume Picasso was a renaissance artist. Tiktok users think watching any film made outside the US makes you a snob. “Replace classic lit with YA and fan fiction” discourse is flourishing. I think we’re just living in anti intellectual times.

it's not anti-intellectualism it's anti-snobbery

Let me ask you this: how many “snobs” have you actually met? Because I have met many people who take interest in art history, watch vintage film or films from films from outside the US (which by the way are not all “arthouse” films), or read and cherish historically and culturally significant literature. But I have never met anyone who will treat me like I’m a bad person for watching Mama Mia or just wanting to be entertained once in a while. I have, however, met people who think art history is stupid and pointless and that those who study it deserve to live in poverty, who are xenophobic and dismissive toward any art made outside the US (or western Europe for that matter), or roll their eyes at people who read literature they consider boring because they’ve never given it a try. In fact, most of the people I know who you would consider “snobs” out of projected insecurity are cautious to bring up their interests because they think they’ll be made fun of. Is anti intellectualism “anti elitist?” At times, but it’s the sort of pseudo populism that fits comfortably within contemporary right wing discourse. Have you paid any attention to politics the last decade or so? If you are allergic to culture and new information, fine. Just don’t claim the moral high ground for it.

you could have just asked for her wig instead of snatching it like that

the thing about Dead White Guys History is like. It is in fact important to learn. The way people are venerated is a mistake, and the way that's the only focus of history is a mistake. But for better or for worse, if you want to understand the origins of the way society is, you do in fact need to read about a bunch of dead white guys and the ways they thought about things.

Like people rag on men who are obsessed with the Roman Empire, and for good reason. But the fact is also that the Roman Empire left a huge cultural footprint that had a massive effect on the evolution of "western society", which then colonised and enslaved the world. If you want to understand why society is the way it is, you need to understand its influences and how its ideas have evolved.

Anyone who thinks those dead white guys are aspirational is a white supremacist, but anyone who thinks you don't need to learn about them is sticking their head in the sand.

double checking the pdf im about to send to make sure the invoice i just scanned didn't magically turn into a full frontal nude image

thinking about how old umbrellas are

i will admit i have looked upon men with a lustful gaze in my time

people vaguely saying 'the horrors' as shorthand for 'life problems, don't worry about it' in conversations where the problems are not going to be delved into has got to be one of my favorite new Ways Of Speaking that has emerged. like it's polite and vague and succinct enough for impersonal conversation but also extremely honest. it's very funny. The Horrors. we all know of them.