“Do you see me as cattle to milk whenever you grow thirsty” was really something

There is a reason that there has been such a concerted effort to remove queer people from their history. Queer history, in its nature, is empowering. It debunks the belief that queerness is unnatural. It reminds queer people that their legacy is that of change, revolution, and beauty. It challenges every defended belief about history being a story of cisgender straight white men doing brave things while the rest of us sat at the sidelines. There is a reason that so many people are so scared of queer people having access to their history.

Snow lit

Death and Page of Swords

Fine, but you're not going without a fight.

sexual thrill at the mere prospect of cataloging things in a database

there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context. like i just picture a bunch of nerds at podiums & one’s like “of course there was a paleolithic bear cult in Northern Eurasia” and another one just looks him in the eye and says “i’l kill you in real life, kevin”

I heard a story once about two microbiologists at a conference who took it out into the parking lot to have a literal fistfight over taxonomy. 

have i told this story yet? idk but it’s good. The Orangutan Story:

my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?

wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.

background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.

so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—

then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”

some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.

so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.

much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.

so my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. then out of the dead silence, the panel moderator stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:

WE! DO NOT! TALK ABOUT! THE ORANGUTAN!

@posturingsimpleton

OMG

Ok that one wins

[ID: text reading: ‘The Milton scholars screamed and argued about how the serpent was supposed to move before it crawled on its belly. Dr. Matthews, enraged that Dr. Goldstein could believe the serpent bounced around on the coiled end of its tail, flipped over the conference table. “Satan is not a fucking pogo stick!” he howled.’]

One of the funniest things about enemies-to-lovers ships is how they’re almost always obsessed with each other. Like if a character actively chooses to interact with another character over and over again instead of simply ignoring them? Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall

"Throw darts at it all you want, but you still printed out a picture of them to hang on your wall." - This is a raw line.

we are gonna be vacuuming up this post for the next five years

the “bad guys” in hallmark movies end up always being the most respectful men ever.

because they will find out their girlfriend of 3 years (that they were about to propose to) went off to a random farm in minnesota, hours away from were the two of them built a life together, and she decided to just… stay there without even consulting him.

and then he decides to take a trip to make sure she’s okay, because this is generally alarming behavior, and then sees that she literally fell in love with her ex within one (1) week- and he wasn’t there, but you can TELL that they’ve made out a couple times.

and then she just strings him along for a few days, until fucking christmas eve, when she just breaks up with him and is like “i know we used to have the same values, but i’ve never loved you. mark makes me happier than you ever did. and you ONLY care about work, whereas i like christmas and fun, like a Good Person.”

and then, after finding out his entire relationship was a lie and he had his life turned upside down in a week and he got dumped on christmas, this guy’s just like “ok yeah that makes sense. i only wish you the best of happiness with mark. i hope you guys build a great life together in christmastreefarmville. thank you for everything.”

An AU where two Hallmark Christmas Bad Guys are both getting flights back to New York after being dumped by their respective Smalltown Blonde Girlfriends, and they bond over their shared experiences and fall in love in the departures lounge

@teashoesandhair your wish is my command :)

Probably, Levi should be more upset.

Probably he is still in shock. Right? He looks out of his taxi window (it's not technically a taxi, just some guy named Corey who offered him a ride to the airport, because Uber doesn't operate in fucking Tinyville, Bumfuck Middle-Of-Nowhere, Utah) and tracks water droplets racing each other down the glass, because of course it's raining, and his bad knee is killing him. 

Levi sniffs and rubs at his eyes and then pulls out his phone and books a ticket back to New York, wincing as four hundred and twenty-six dollars are deducted from his bank account. 

And, like, he should definitely be more upset.

He just got broken up with. He was engaged, for God's sake. A four-year relationship… over. Just like that. 

Corey says, "Ten minutes to the station." 

My blog is a safe space for burnouts, flakes, layabouts, ne'er-do-wells, underachievers, and anyone who can't be arsed

I wish you all very good sex. if you don't like sex, I wish you a very good romance. if you don't want either of them. I wish you a very good bowl of soup and some bread, mate.

4 / 71

the fact that the pirates of the caribbean and pride & prejudice are both set in the georgian era is absolutely wild to me

So you’re saying it’s entirely plausible for there to be a Pirates of the Caribbean and Pride and Prejudice (2005) crossover where ElizabethSwann!Keira Knightley meets ElizabethBennet!Keira Knightley.

There is a possible Pirates of the Caribbean/Pride & Prejudice crossover where Captain James Norrington is a marriage prospect for an Austen girl...

That is THE crossover I need in my life!!

Whoa whoa wait wait wait

Pride and Prejudice is 1810s

Golden age of piracy is 1710s

Guys, it's not the same. A whole bunch of really important shit happened in the intervening years. There were a LOT of Georges.

yes thank you!!!

while i love seeing all the headcanons and crossover ideas, the georgian era spans 116 years - from george the first in 1714 till george the fourth in 1830.

it’s simply not possible 😭

A herding dog at work

the fact that the pirates of the caribbean and pride & prejudice are both set in the georgian era is absolutely wild to me

So you’re saying it’s entirely plausible for there to be a Pirates of the Caribbean and Pride and Prejudice (2005) crossover where ElizabethSwann!Keira Knightley meets ElizabethBennet!Keira Knightley.

There is a possible Pirates of the Caribbean/Pride & Prejudice crossover where Captain James Norrington is a marriage prospect for an Austen girl...

That is THE crossover I need in my life!!

Whoa whoa wait wait wait

Pride and Prejudice is 1810s

Golden age of piracy is 1710s

Guys, it's not the same. A whole bunch of really important shit happened in the intervening years. There were a LOT of Georges.

happy hanukkah!!!!

*gasp* hanukkats