I just want everyone to know that your microwave has a button that says “defrost.” It’s not the same as heating it. 30 minutes on defrost will thaw a chicken to the same temp as if it’d been sitting out all day.
Has absolutely zero reservations about dancing in public, no matter what she looks like.
Always carries out a dare until the very end.
Harbours a strong, courageous streak, which, despite all of her other wonderful characteristics, is her underlying, most potent trait, which is why she ended up in Gryffindor.
That bravery also involves standing up for what is right.
Sticks up for those she loves.
Even when people are beyond her help (*cough* Snape *cough*).
Jumps in puddles.
Loves - and loves to help - animals, big or small.
(‘Would you consider James an animal?’ ‘Shut up, Marlene.’)
Isn’t necessarily allergic to lilies, but tells everyone she thinks they’re clichéd. Loves lilies anyway.
Likes plants in general, even though she has two black thumbs.
Never one to be intimidated by an opponent.
Snarky.
Although, she can be easily flustered (*cough* James *cough).
Often talks back to her teachers, but never in a disrespectful manner.
The above is pretty much canon, according to Slughorn.
So she always uses cheek, but never in an ignorant manner.
Loves sweets, but nothing too sickly.
Adores marshmallows.
She loves bonfires and sparklers, so she can roast marshmallows.
Likes dogs, but is a cat person.
Can’t blow bubblegum.
Likes Queen.
Likes Quidditch, but doesn’t trust herself on a broom.
Doesn’t trust herself with fire, either, but still uses sparklers religiously.
Always takes part in Bonfire Night.
Collects candles.
Chases butterflies (with Peter).
Doesn’t cook an awful lot, but is very good at slow-stewing meals, such as casseroles and soups, seeing as it’s so similar to Potions.
Loves cupcakes.
And loves to decorate cupcakes, even though she makes a mess.
She’ll bake them with Peter (well, he does most of the baking), and she’ll help to decorate. Peter’s decorating skills usually trump her’s, though.
She just adores the pastel colours of the icing.
Sets up bird houses in her backyard.
Doesn’t mind one bit when visiting owls use them.
Probably visits the Owlery more often than she sends letters.
Likes stargazing.
Does it often, with James, even before they were dating.
Usually involved tears and cigarette smoke.
Prefers cloud-watching, though.
Likes astrology, sure, but doesn’t set a lot of store by it (at least, that’s what she tells people).
Mildly superstitious.
Loves to climb trees.
Broke her arm when she was kid, once, from falling out a tree. Healed a little too quickly (from da MAGIKS).
Will fiercely defend everyone she loves until her dying breath. Which she did.
Loves making - and wearing - daisy chains.
Her favourite thing about Summer is the fashion.
She wears sundresses, sunhats, and sandals religiously.
But, she prefers to go barefoot.
Loves the beach.
Sticks her tongue out at people.
Likes strawberries, and strawberry-flavoured things (especially strawberry ice cream).
Gets hay fever, but will put up with it in the Spring, because everything is fresh and bright and new.
Seems to ladder every pair of tights she owns.
Always manages to loose her quills.
Likes art, but doesn’t set much store by her talents.
Can cartwheel.
Can only do handstands underwater.
Used to do gymnastics as a kid, not ballet.
Paints her toenails pink.
Adores her Doc Martens.
Likes maxi-skirts.
Tried to write a journal, but couldn’t stick with it for more than a few days.
She’s not bad swimmer.
Accidentally swum to the deep end when she was young, and nearly went under before someone dragged her out.
Her worst fear is drowning.
Loves to ride her bike. Only wobbles a little bit.
Loves gingerbread, and whacks James over the head when he suggests that it’s because of her hair.
‘Shut up, you prat.’ ‘You love it, Ginge.’
Likes tennis.
Lily in her white tennis skirt evokes a few snarky comments from James.
She throws her racket at him.
And then starts pelting tennis balls at him.
Lily in a visor.
Has a great friendship with each of the Marauders.
Bonds with Sirius over their family issues.
She worries greatly about her family, not her blood status.
Steals Remus’s jumpers from him.
Makes her own jewellery.
Made a friendship bracelet for each of the Marauders.
Peter accepts his happily.
Remus smiles and wears his proudly.
Sirius wears his with a multitude of wristbands.
James refuses to wear it, at first, because ‘I’m your boyfriend, Lily, not just a friend.’, so she kisses him on the cheek and tells him it can be a Boyfriend Bracelet.
He never takes it off, after that.
Squeals when Sirius gives her rides on his motorbike.
Doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, because she doesn’t like how it feels on her skin.
In fact, she used to wear more than she does now.
She would cover up her freckles.
But she stopped when James points out how much he likes her freckles.
However, she knows that she doesn’t need the attention of a bloke to make her feel comfortable in her own skin.
Her favourite colour is mint green.
Because they would come in her drink, she chews on mint leaves in Summer.
She does the same thing when she’s pregnant.
Buys chew toys for Sirius for his presents.
(Gets him the vinyl album he wanted, anyway.)
Calls James ‘Fork’ when she finds out why the boys call him ‘Prongs’.
Puts a cheeto on each fingers and eats it that way. Always.
Plays piano.
LOVES SCI-FI.
LOVES STAR WARS.
(Owns Star Wars pyjamas.)
LOVES DOCTOR WHO.
IS THE BIGGEST DOCTOR WHO NERD YOU WILL EVER MEET.
Grew up watching it with her family.
Elven-year-old Lily asks older Muggleborn Hogwarts’ students if everything in Doctor Who is real.
They just smile and ruffle her hair and laugh and tell her, ‘No, of course they aren’t.’
Loves her stuffed toys.
Still sleeps with one and whacks people when they tease her about it.
Always says that if she were to ever have a girl, she would name her Petunia.
Likes the rain, even though it means that she can’t go outdoors.
Likes tea, including herbal, and hot chocolate, too. Isn’t a huge fan of coffee.
Wants to travel to India, one day.
Will fiercely defend those she loves until her dying breath. And she did.
“i want to drive a car that doesn’t break down all the time”
“i want to one day consider buying a place instead of renting”
“i’d like to not be in so much debt”
we are the least entitled generation but we get the most shit
The truth in this tho
The other day, I started thinking about all the things I would do if I had a ton of money. They were almost all about paying off debt, buying a house, fixing my car, and getting more education for a better job. The most frivolous thing was getting a dog.
Yeah, I think my plans if I ever got rich would be “pay off all of my debt, acquire a nice apartment, pay off my parent’s debt, pay off Adler’s debt (I got you, sweetie), get a dog…start a charity?”
i really hate the effect our hypersexualized society has on young girls. do you know how fucked up it is for an 11 year old girl to be scared of heterosexual sex because she thinks its inevitable? when i was 11, guys told me it would be painful, that penetration was mandatory, and that guys will want blowjobs. when i said i didnt want to do that ever, everyone made fun of me, and my parents told me i’d want that when i got older. guys always look forward to sex but little girls not even in their teens yet are anticipating it in fear because they think it’s mandatory for them to experience pain and humiliation to please men honestly what the fuuuck
Okay, so Darcy Lewis, right? She’s pretty much been comic relief this whole time. She’s the one who talks about boys, points out the obvious, and calls Mjolnir “myao-myao”.
But what if one day they’re in the heat of battle, and Thor is knocked out and Mjolnir is lying on the ground, and Darcy comes out of her hiding spot thinking she’s got nothing to lose and grabs the hammer and she ACTUALLY LIFTS IT.
And everyone is watching her like “OH MY GOD WHAT DON’T WE KNOW ABOUT YOU?” As Darcy saves the day, and eventually Thor wakes up and sees her with the hammer and gets this huge grin on his face like “FRIEND DARCY, YOU HAVE BECOME A FINE WARRIOR!”
“i just got turned into an incubus or a succubus and i’m like the least smooth and most self-conscious person on the planet so i’m literally starving because i don’t know how to seduce people” AU. BONUS POINTS IF THEY ARE A VIRGIN.
“i’m a siren and i keep accidentally forgetting that i have roommates now and and end up putting them in my thrall when i’m singing taylor swift songs in the shower” AU
“i’m a newly-turned werewolf without a pack and i can’t really control myself well on full moon nights yet and you keep finding me passed out naked on your lawn” AU
“i got cursed and turned into an animal and taken to the shelter and ended up getting adopted by someone who is really hot OH NO” AU
“i’m a med student who has a huge crush on the hot guy who works at the coffee shop who always gives me free drinks when i’m stressed and calls me princess even though i pretend i think it’s annoying but i’m extremely concerned about him because he always smells like smoke so i always give him lectures about how terrible cigarettes are for you and i may have made a powerpoint which is probably excessive but lung health is extremely important and oops it turns out he’s part-dragon or something hahahaha oops” AU
“my best friend got turned into a frog and now i’m being the best wingman/woman/person ever by carrying them around to bars and getting hot people to kiss them in hopes of hooking them up with their true love” AU
“i’m a history major and i keep getting into arguments with one of my classmates about things because they keep saying i’m wrong so i finally scream, ‘how would you know?!?’ and they’re like, ‘because i was THERE!’ and that’s how we all find out that there is a centuries-old vampire taking our British history class” AU
Okay, dudes, so I saw mad max yesterday and AM STILL REELING.
Like, I had heard all the feminist hype about this movie and was very excited to go see it, but I had the secret fear that it would still let me down. Like, I was afraid it had been OVERhyped. So I tried to go in calmly. CALM, COOL, AND COLLECTED. That was me.
WAS.
WAS IS THE KEY WORD THERE. Because I walked out of it FUCKING GRINNING AND I WAS NONE OF THOSE THINGS ANYMORE BECAUSE MAD MAX WAS THE GREATEST THING EVER!!!!!
Here are the ways that Mad Max was AWESOME (not comprehensive and in no particular order. Putting it in list form just makes me look like I am a little less crazy than I actually am. Note: there are spoilers! and cursing- lots of cursing.)
So the beginning is kind of what I expected. Max captured by weird dudes, Furiosa is like the most honored warrior and in charge of driving the biggest truck (coolio) and the escaping wives are very explicit in their message (also coolio. gotta be explicit with these things) but, still, LETS SKIP FORWARD TO THE GOOD PARTS:
In the first meeting of Max and Furiosa- THEY BOTH TRY TO KILL ONE ANOTHER. Like… there is no instant friendship of “I will help you with these women” or “We need your help because we are women.” NO. THEY BOTH ATTACK. FURIOSA THROWS THE FIRST PUNCH.
Also, THE WIVES FUCKING TAKE PART IN THIS FIGHT! They are not fighters and don’t know what they’re doing but they fucking GRAB THE CHAIN that is attached to that fucker’s head and START YANKING. WOMEN WHO DON’T HAVE THE SKILLS STILL FIGHTIN BACK. oh god, just… it’s too good.
Within like a DAY of meeting her, Max is following Furiosa’s orders like it’s his MUTHAFUCKING JOB. Just does whatever she says. he is still holding a gun on the wives UNTIL SHE TELLS HIM TO GET UP AND DRIVE. and then he does that. Because she’s a badass. and you listen to the badass.
Okay, this is one of my biggest things in life so maybe other people won’t even notice it- but BOTH MAX AND FURIOSA DRIVE. Like, it’s not assumed that because Max is the man, he is going to drive all the time. It’s her car. She can drive it. He can take a nap in the passenger seat. GAH, YAASSS.
The gun scene. You’ve all already heard about it. Max is a bad shot. Furiosa is a better shot. HE JUST LETS HER USE HIS SHOULDER. Just take me up now. I am done.
Okay, but don’t take me up because then i would miss this next part and this is great. This might be my favorite part. Are you ready? Because Mad Max, the title character of this movie, is about to go on a solo-mission. A dangerous, manly mission by himself to beat one of the big bads and steal his supplies. He’s going alone, as men do, into the night. It’s probably going to be violent and badass and - OOPS NO WAIT. WE DON’T EVEN SEE IT. Like… I don’t think people realize what a big deal this is. Because it’s harder to see things that aren’t there but… BUT GUYS. This could have been a BIG FREAKING DEAL. MAX’S SOLO MISSION AND IT IS NOT IN THE MOVIE. Like, let that sink in. Nope, no solo mission for you Max. We don’t even care enough to watch that. That’s boring. It’s been done. WE DON’T EVEN NEED TO SEE IT.
Nux actually having a very sweet singing voice as Nick Hoult is a lovely singer. Slit can't sing for shit, all raspy growls and off-key crowing (he thinks he's good). Ace can rap like hell.
The Firebird - Stravinsky (The Finale is very famous. Also listen to Rite of Spring if you’re adventurous/want to hear something that literally started a riot)
Boléro- Ravel (also check out
Daphnis et Chloé
because it’s gorgeous and crazy and awesome)
The Planets- Holst (”Mars” and “Jupiter” are the most famous)
imagine if tony goes “i’m too hot” and expects steve to go “hot damn” but instead steve just gets up and turns on the air conditioner
and the next day tony walks into the room when bucky goes “i’m too hot” and steve looks tony directly in the eyes and whispers “hot damn” and tony looks at him with a look of utmost betrayal
Y'know what, I’ve decided that Clint met Nat after he was already married, and as they became better and better friends, she’s coming over to the house, she’s playing with the kids, she’s connecting with Laura, etc he was horrified to find that he was falling in love with her, because he loves Laura and didn’t want to ruin his family. And one night he confesses this all to Laura and says “if you don’t want me to work with her anymore I’ll explain it to her and move to a different department” and instead of making him do that Laura was all “…actually I’m sorta in love with her too; I mean I’m not interested in having sex with her but I fantasize about touching her romantically and I really want her to be part of our family”
So they open up their marriage to Nat and at first Nat is like “sure” because she loves them both back, but as Nat starts to outgrow the Red Room brainwashing and integrating into normal society she also starts losing her comfort with doing things outside the norm. Because their arrangement isn’t hurting anybody right now but surely it will in the future, right? Otherwise more people would be poly. And while she knows it’s completely wrongheaded and irrational, the fact that she can’t have kids makes her feel like she’s “not really part of the marriage”, especially after she tries to pick the kids up from school and isn’t allowed because “you’re not their mom” even though Clint and Laura both authorized her to do so.
So she asks Clint and Laura if they can take a break from the whole thing while she sorts things out, and they say of course because they love her and want her to be in a good headspace.
And that’s when she convinces herself that she’s in love with Bruce (Tony’s got Pepper, Thor has Jane, and Steve has his own issues because he’s stuck on both Peggy and Bucky), and that’s why the BruTasha in AoU was so forced and awkward and out of character.
And after Bruce leaves Nat goes back to Clint and Laura all “I fucked up. Start over?” in her trademark deadpan and of course they take her back.
the year is 2066. physical contact has been outlawed. hug dealers tenderly embrace people in the dead of night and shady people hold hands in dark streets
i want to read this novel
I want to write this novel.
I want to edit this novel. Sounds like we have a plan.
What she means:
Hozier is so underrated i mean i know take me to church became super popular but that's not even the best song in his album. he literally wrote a ballad about two corpses rotting together and it's the most beautiful thing ive ever heard and i know like real people do is played everytime a couple kiss on tv but the song is more than a makeout song. it's so much deeper than that. all his songs are amazing, he sings like an angel even live and he is very vocal about gay rights, sex positivity and rape culture. also he's a huge dork and his hair is the reason i breathe and i just think we should talk about him more.
I’m not even much of a fan of genderbends but goddamn am I even less of a fan of getting ordered around about what I should enjoy and how I should enjoy it and being lectured about how ‘problematic’ it is, when the real problem is that they’ve cast the thing in question in black and white and refuse to admit that there’s anything but their narrow framing.
Changing a character to the ‘opposite’ cis gender is a very different thing than making them trans or nonbinary. Insisting that people only change characters to trans is also really damn invalidating, because it implies that being trans is interchangable with being cis. Whoopsie doodle!
I think the real issue here is that a lot of people want to see more trans headcanons, but for some reason think that using sj words while being bossy and rude is the way to go about it. Dress it up in progressive language all you like; at the end of the day you’re still being bossy and rude to get what you want, regardless of anyone else’s valid feelings.
i get really irritated at kids who scream that genderbends are transphobic because they’re completely missing the context and history. they have no idea. it’s like to them, Cis People made up genderbends specifically to thumb their noses at trans people.
rule 63 was originally a guy thing, sexual objectification thing. it states ‘for every male character, there’s a female version of that character’, and not because the dudes who were into it cared about having more realistically rendered female heroes in their media. it was made popular on 4chan and porn boards and comics+gaming forums because you could reduce a manly male character into a sexy tits-and-ass pinup. there were related kinks of sissification, but mostly it was about getting to jerk it to a sexy female version of a previously unappealing, macho male character.
then women got hold of the rule and started going, okay. let’s look at the female version of this male character. let’s talk about being a woman in a man’s world. let’s talk about rorschach’s misogyny, tony stark’s womanizing, batman’s grimness, the fact there’s one girl ninja to every four or five guy ninjas, let’s talk about that in the hypothetical context of these male heroes being women instead. if there’s a girl version for every male character, what does that mean? what’s her story?
and it became this really amazing lens for female fans to interrogate stories through, to examine the effects of sexism and misogyny and masculinity, to introduce another woman into a story with very few, to identify with fully-rendered heroes of the fan’s own gender. and to interrogate the very nature of gender, which led into the development of genderbends where the character’s gender identity didn’t necessarily match their assigned sex, and from there an increasing interest in, and familiarity with, trans characters, trans people, and trans issues.
so like. people now reducing the issue to ‘cis people are gross and hate trans people’ is pretty ridiculous. it ignores basically twenty years of women questioning, confronting and then dismantling the de-facto heteronormative, exploitative male gaze in order to create the radically progressive fandom atmosphere as we know it today on tumblr.
I’d been trying to put into words my issue with the idea that genderbent versions of characters are somehow automatically, innately transphobic, and I think you pretty well nailed it.
Originally, it was called ‘genderswap’ or ‘genderswitch’, which was rightfully criticized for reinforcing a binary view of gender. Hence why it is now ‘genderbend‘. Things can bend in many directions.
my strangest legacy - in high school, for one reason or another (I can’t remember) my friends and I wrote “34 days until March 2nd” on the whiteboard in the drama classroom. It was completely arbitrary but we kept it it up, “30 days until March 2nd” ”23 days until March 2nd” etc. It spread around enough that the entire school is buzzing about what is going to happen on March 2nd. We figure we should think of something and decide to bring in cake. There were about 13 of us in total committed to bringing a cake. On March 2nd, during 3rd period lunch we all entered the cafeteria in a line (the parade of the cakes) and laid them out—a grand cake buffet for everyone in that lunch period. We did it the next year. And after we graduated it kept going.
This past March 2nd was the 9th year they’ve done it. It’s become a school sponsored event. There are t-shirts for this thing every year. March 2nd is cake day. I am a god.
heres to my size 3-8 girls. heres to my slightly squishy ladies who, whenever they have shown the slightest discomfort in their bodies, have been shut down immediately because “i would kill to have a body like yours!!!!!” “shut the fuck up youre so skinny wtf” “youre not gonna get all gross and anorexic are you?”
heres to my girls with skinny arms but a chubby belly. heres to my girls with a double chin but impossible waistline. heres to my girls with thick thighs and a flat butt. heres to my girls with disproportionate bodies. heres to my girls who were never “skinny enough,” or “big enough.” heres to you. youre fucking flawless.
when did tumblr collectively decide not to use punctuation like when did this happen why is this a thing
it just looks so smooth I mean look at this sentence flow like a jungle river
ACTUALLY
This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.
Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:
ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff
Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.
In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.
Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.
A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.
Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you don’t think that’s cool as fuck then I don’t even know what to tell you.
FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT you are allowed to feel proud of yourself for things that might seem silly to other people, like getting better at a video game or putting together a nice outfit for the next morning or finishing a book. You deserve to feel proud for your accomplishment.
The only friendly reminder I’ve ever seen on tumblr that was, in fact, friendly.
my brother and his ”“friend“” are having an argument over who would top between them if they were gay together
I’m sitting against his door listening to them and my brother says “i think my dick is bigger so i’d top” and his friend says “well i think mines bigger” and now there is silence i think theyre checking
It’s all quiet and my brother goes “bro, you’re fucking hung”
OK I THINK THEYRE FUCKING I’M GONE GOODBYE I DONT WANT TO HEAR THIS
That look that Max gets when he picks up Furiosa kills me every time, he looks so terrified. Poor hobo man doesn't want to loose his queen
do you mean this face anon?? this face?? because yeah. yeeeah. that is the face of the most frantic, most terrified, tiny baby ever to roam the wasteland.
or maybe you mean this face, where he’s realising exactly how hurt she is (and cheedo’s in the background like eh, tis a scratch).
or maybe you mean this face, which i like to call The Worst Face, because of how terrible it is. this is the face you make when you realise that you have to bail soon because you’re having feelings and that hasn’t happened in A Long Time.
okay jesus fuck this conversation has gone far enough so:
hey, so you like bernie sanders! i like bernie sanders too! i agree with his politics! he is doing better than people expected in the democratic primaries, which is cool!
what are you going to do if he loses?
because given the tone of the conversations i hear on this website right now– given the sheer hatred of hillary that’s emerging, given the overwhelming feeling that bernie sanders is amazing and the messiah and the only candidate that’s worth voting for in america– here’s what i see happening in mid-2016:
bernie sanders, who despite his better-than-expected performance still has an unbelievably low chance of winning the primaries, loses the primaries to hillary clinton
the leftist wing of the democratic party (that’s us– tumblr, yeah, but also the whole occupy-black lives matter-third wave feminist-young educated millennials crowd), having spent the past 10 months campaigning against hillary clinton, is overwhelmingly disappointed
while a few people are willing to bite the bullet and campaign for hillary, energy is low, disillusionment is high, and many leftist americans don’t campaign, don’t donate, and don’t vote (or vote for third-party candidates, like the green party or the peace and freedom party)
the republican party wins the presidential election.
(i literally shivered as i typed that last bullet point, btw– i know there are people voting in 2016 who were ten years old when obama was elected, and y’all may not remember much of the bush years. i was only 13 when bush left, but jesus christ– remember when hurricane katrina was overwhelmingly badly handled? remember when the patriot act passed? remember when the housing bubble collapsed? remember when the president said god told him to invade iraq? y’all wanna do that again?)
so what are you going to do if bernie sanders loses?
i need you to think about that now. i need you to not be surprised when it happens. i need you to not put all your hopes in one basket.
you think the gop won’t be pouring all their resources into this election? you think the superpacs and the koch brothers and the oil lobbyists won’t be throwing their money at ballot boxes until they spit out the result they want? you think the rich and powerful and conservative won’t be bringing their best game?
they will, and if we don’t work twice as hard as they do– no matter who the democratic nominee is– we are fucked.
i need you to be okay with the idea of hillary clinton being president of the united states, and i need you to make peace with that before she wins the primaries, so that you’re prepared and ready to campaign for her with all your might if she’s the democratic nominee.
because i honest-to-god believe this country will not survive another four, eight, twelve years of a republican administration.
my hand to god i have seen so many posts on my dash that have been both heartbreakingly optimistic and absolutely mind-bogglingly uninformed (and naive, but that comes with time; information comes with googling the way the government of your own country works. fun fact: not all primaries are open primaries! i know! this is inconsistent! it is also the world that we live in and i don’t think we’re going to get around to redesigning the electoral system before november 2016. just saying) and, like every election year, i have sat down and thought, albeit briefly, about this possibility:
the republican party wins the presidential election.
that is not a possibility that i can or will accept. i know we like to mythologize our figures here and put them on can-do-no-wrong pedestals, but, for god’s sake, to paraphrase: can we live in the real fucking world here, please? by all means, know that we can do better. by all means, know that we should. but here are some facts:
the us electoral system is not going to change by november 2016.
the notes on your tumblr post about bernie sanders’ ideology are not going to translate to votes.
those votes are not as big a percentage of the voting population as you think they are.
even if they were, bernie sanders is not going to be able to wave a magic wand and:
turn those ideas into policies
get those policies signed into law
get those laws implemented
they aren’t going to be perfect anyway.
can you imagine the reactionary voting in the election immediately following that anyway.
this is not how politics works. you don’t vote a politician into office and then stand back and watch the world fix itself! you don’t get to do that. it takes work and it takes time and it takes, sometimes, the willingness to accept and keep pushing through lowered expectations. i’m happy for your optimism and i’m happy for your energy. we need those! don’t lose them. do, however, remember that there is context to this, because we live, again, in the real fucking world.
And this has an embarrassingly low number of notes.
I know how a lot of people here feel about Hilary. If I had my druthers, I would MUCH rather have Bernie Sanders as president because his politics so closely align with my own. Like, stunningly close. A-breath-of-fresh-air close.
But consider these words from an ancient, jaded, 34 year old fuck who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000…
NONE OF US agreed with Gore. I mean, not really, at least. He was Republican-lite. First off, his wife Tipper was a friggin’ censorship Nazi, Gore was a Southern Baptist who was mum on gay rights, and while he gave lip service to climate change, please note that An Inconvenient Truth had not been produced or filmed, and there wasn’t much in the way of supporting the Kyoto protocols in his platform. He supported the limited military action in Iraq, supported NAFTA, and supported driving our production overseas. There wasn’t much to his platform other than “less scary alternative to Bush”. In other words, he was problematic as hell.
Then there was Ralph Nader, a consumer rights advocate, a proponent of gay marriage before it became a mainstream cause to champion, against NAFTA, spoke out against the military industrial complex, was pro-union, and anti-corporate.
And I voted for him. Proudly. In the general election. My reasoning was that nearly everyone I knew was voting for him (and everyone I knew were fellow college age leftists) so if enough of us got together and enough of us wanted that change to happen, then it would, right?
“Well, we’re talking about the primaries,” I can already hear you say. And yes, we are. But consider this: if Bernie ends up not winning the primaries, and no one turns out to the polls to vote for Hilary so they can “make a statement” or because she’s “problematic”, or turns out and votes Green or some other third Party for those same reasons, then history will repeat itself with disastrous consequences.
Here’s what happened on election night, November 7, 2000:
We waited. We watched Gore lose in battleground state after battleground state by just about the same number of votes that went to Ralph fucking Nader. Bush took all the dip shits who thought he’d be a swell feller to have a beer with. And then Florida and the recount and the Republican Party-led coup that stormed the voting recount, triggered the Supreme Court ruling and handed George W. Bush control of the country.
The first thing Bush did was reverse each and every executive order Clinton had put in place over the protestations of a crybaby Republican Congress, and most of those executive orders were designed to protect the middle class from corporate America and protect our budget surplus from the military industrial complex. Then Bush instituted legalized class warfare: the tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and still do to this day.
Then 9/11 happened.
If you’re 22 right now, then in 2001 you were 8 years old. In 2001, I was 20. I watched friends of mine who had joined the military because there were few other opportunities for them after high school get shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan and get their limbs blown off by IUDs. There are people I knew, people I ate lunch with every day, who are FUCKING DEAD right now.
Torture. Suppression of the press. Siphoning the nation’s wealth to the upper 1%, creating our current aristocracy. Investments made by principle members of the Bush regime in for-profit military-industrial corporations that were tasked with murdering hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Sunsetting the assault weapons ban. The Defense of Marriage Act. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The loss of an entire city and fucking nothing done about it as people were drowning and starving to death in New Orleans. No Child Left UnTested Behind. A color coded number system on every day of the news telling Americans how frightened they needed to be that day that hilariously enough coincided with how far Bush dipped in the polls that week. He dipped, we went up to terror threat: orange. His poll numbers went back up. Like clockwork.
Between 2001 and 2005 us leftists who thought that there was no different than center-left Democrats and right wing Republicans got hit by a giant clue by four and watched the fucking Republicans dismantle our safety, economic security, and our entire way of life. No, the centrists are not the same. THE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS ARE NOT THE SAME. One faction sort of listens to us. The other doesn’t give a shit about us and actively promotes policies designed to kill and silence us.
So please Support Bernie Sanders. Support him because if enough leftists make their voices known through his candidacy, then NO MATTER WHAT it will influence the DNC platform next summer. Support him because we’re all passionate about returning America to a thriving, working democracy and flushing out the corporate lobbyist corruption that has held our entire government hostage for a decade.
But if he doesn’t win the primaries then you need to support Hilary Clinton. And I’m not kidding, I’m not being hyperbolic. If the Republicans win, then you need to start preparing yourself for life under a fascist state.
Hint: it will help if you’re fundamentalist Christian, wealthy, white, straight, male, and cisgender.
Otherwise, you’re fucked.
All of this. Read it. I also lived through the Nader debacle. Vote for Bernie in the primaries if you agree with him. I like a lot of his politics too. But then you MUST SHOW UP FOR HILLARY IN THE GENERAL ELECTION OR WE WILL END UP WITH A THIRD PRESIDENT BUSH.
Three Supreme Court Justices are very old and may die in the next Presidential term.
“HIGH SCHOOL
This is how to run a stick of Chapstick
down the black boxes on your scantron
so the grading machine skips the wrong
answers. This is how to honor roll. Hell,
this is how to National Honor Society.
This is being voted “Most Likely to Marry
for Money” or “Talks the Most, Says the
Least” for senior superlatives. This is
stepping around the kids having panic
attacks in the hallway. This is being the
kid having a panic attack in the hallway.
This is making the A with purple moons
stamped under both eyes. We had to try.
This is telling the ACT supervisor you have
ADHD to get extra time. Today, the average
high school student has the same anxiety
levels as the average 1950’s psychiatric
patient. We know the Pythagorean theorem
by heart, but short-circuit when asked
“How are you?” We don’t know. We don’t
know. That wasn’t on the study guide.
We usually know the answer, but rarely
know ourselves.”—HIGH SCHOOL By Blythe Baird (via farfromhomee)
