Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

skull-bearer:

thainfool-of-a-took:

roachpatrol:

mercurialmalcontent:

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.

catceleste:

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. 

chlochloariadne:

spicy-vagina-tacos:

spicy-vagina-tacos:

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.

staff:

prismatic-bell:

atomicairspace:

copperbooms:

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.

Hey cool

shanology:

necesitamos:

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. 

booknerdjenny:

Discovering a book that has both a good cover and a good plot is probably one of the most satisfying things ever

whenthesmokeisinyoureyes:

do you have those people that you’d go anywhere with unconditionally, like they could say “lets go check out that dumpster” and you’d be like “im in”

aph-badtouchtrio:

aph-badtouchtrio:

aph-badtouchtrio:

aph-badtouchtrio:

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

artielu:

kata-speaks:

swanjolras:

endquestionmark:

swanjolras:

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.

#remember ralph nader? #I FUCKING WELL REMEMBER RALPH NADER #WE’RE NOT DOING THAT AGAIN. (via swanjolras)

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.

#i have read posts calling hillary clinton problematic.#i fully expect an edit of bernie sanders in a flower crown to cross my dash sooner or later.#real. world. (via endquestionmark)

THIS.

FUCKING THIS.

FUCKING EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS.

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.

This country was an unchecked fascist dictatorship for six years. Don’t believe me? Here’s the dictionary definition of fascism. And here’s what happened during the Bush regime.

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 for all the “problematic” that you imagine a Hilary Clinton presidency could be, I want you to imagine a Republican presidency (pick one) in which they want people like us fucking dead as pawns in their war games or fucking dying because they’ve stripped away the Affordable Healthcare Act.

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.

www.rockthevote.com

kaitlinthestudent:

Even if it’s not a full 8-hour cycle, please sleep.

pope-oprah:

africanaquarian:

nozayn:

Beyoncé & Jay-Z are attempting to buy the rights to the confederate flag so it can’t be used anymore God is Real

This is so perfect because how heated would white southern racists be to see two black millionaires buy the rights to their symbol of hatred.

honestly just think about it
Jay-Z and Bey sitting in their mansion talking about how shitty it is that people still fly that goddamn flag and Jay-Z kinda stopping and thinking for a minute and saying
“well…. why don’t we just buy it”

my-insanity-is-an-artform:

Ok Headcannon time!

So Steve finally manages to track Bucky down and brings him back to the Tower. Things are understandably tense between everyone and Bucky. 

Meanwhile Darcy and Jane have both been brought into the Tower as well.

Most of the Avengers are out saving the world, leaving only Bucky in the Tower when H.Y.D.R.A decide they want their asset back. Bucky is pinned down and Steve is desperate to get back to him,

When he does, Darcy and her trusty taser is standing there with a stunned Bucky and numerous unconscious H.Y.D.R.A agents.

And that is the story of how Darcy Lewis gained a H.Y.D.R.A profile that only states; WARNING. EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. FLEE ON SIGHT.

selenedaydreams:

Hayley Atwell is ruthless and has no chill and I don’t think I’ve ever been so in love with one single human being 

usbdongle:

turkish-delightful:

detached1026:

turkish-delightful:

How could you be against free college. Like if I think about student loans for more than a few minutes I think about jumping off a cliff have some pity damn

Because hundreds of thousands of people have already paid for their tuition. Should they be reimbursed? It’s not fair to the people who have already paid/ are paying for college. That’s why.

Yeah I love thinking how my kids are gonna cry and have panic attacks because of the heavy student loans they’re gonna have just because they want to go to a good school. Yeah I really want them to suffer just like I did bc yknow I paid why should they have it any easier than me?? I don’t want America to be better than I found it. Fuck future generations.

i dont think we should use cars because it’s not fair to the people who had to travel via horseback. should they be resurrected with necromancy and allowed to apply for a drivers license?  think logically here

thisisnotharmless:

Speaking of linguistics, there’s one particular linguistic tick that I think clearly separates Baby Boomers from Millennials: how we reply when someone says “thank you.”

You almost never hear a Millennial say “you’re welcome.” At least not when someone thanks them. It just isn’t done. Not because Millenials are ingrates lacking all manners, but because the polite response is “No problem.” Millennials only use “you’re welcome” sarcastically when they haven’t been thanked or when something has been taken from/done to them without their consent. It’s a phrase that’s used to point out someone else’s rudeness. A Millenial would typically be fairly uncomfortable saying “you’re welcome” as an acknowledgement of genuine thanks because the phrase is only ever used disengenuously.

Baby Boomers, however, get really miffed if someone says “no problem” in response to being thanked. From their perspective, saying “no problem” means that whatever they’re thanking someone for was in fact a problem, but the other person did it anyway as a personal favor. To them “You’re welcome” is the standard polite response.

“You’re welcome” means to Millennials what “no problem” means to Baby Boomers, and vice versa.The two phrases have converse meanings to the different age sets. I’m not sure exactly where this line gets drawn, but it’s somewhere in the middle of Gen X. This is a real pain in the ass if you work in customer service because everyone thinks that everyone else is being rude when they’re really being polite in their own language.

misandryad:

Hands up if large groups of aggressively loud white boys in your vicinity freak you out

socialmediasocrates:

Gryffindors don’t give a shit about rules. The most hardline of them don’t even care about people. They care about justice. Right or wrong, black or white, there are no shades of grey. If it’s just, it’s always just; if it’s unjust, it’s always wrong. Hermione’s ruthlessness makes her a Gryffindor. She is absolutely sure that she is on the side of justice in everything that she does, and it’s such a Gryffindor trait.

Because Slytherins are ruthless, but they care about rules. Their own rules, usually, but rules nonetheless. They will impose parameters and limitations on themselves just so they have a framework to operate within. If doing something means violating their own internal code, then they’re not gonna do it. Even fucking Voldemort is like that. He broke every single fucking rule the Wizarding World ever put in place, but damn if he’d break his own.

Keep reading

This is actually remarkably true, at least as far as the Gryffindor one goes.  The people I’ve just met kind of blink at me when i tell them I’m a Gryffindor and go “You would literally murder someone in cold blood if you thought they were going to hurt your people.”  And for some reason this baffles them.  Nerve and chivalry are well and good, but it’s the vicious, all-consuming determination to follow honor at the cost of all else that makes a Gryffindor, as far as I’m concerned.

princessnitty:

It must be really nice to be a man. I saw a shirtless man with ear buds in, jogging by himself at night. I can’t safely do anything like that.

thewinstonisin:

to be honest, i am never going to not love fury road. and i am never going to not love fury road for the exact same reason that i am never going to not love pacific rim: because they are movies that focus uncompromisingly on women and on the stories of women and do not pick at them or highlight their flaws or put them in conflict with other women so that the dudebros in the corner can yell “catfight!” and whistle.

pacific rim doesn’t pass the bechdel test of course, but it is still a movie where i can very readily believe that guillermo del toro asked somebody “do we really need a mildly attractive white boy who isn’t portayed as a sack of shit for the majority of the movie as a protagonist?” and some stuffy hollywood exec informed him that he had to have at least one so he sighed and picked charlie hunnam out of a lineup and informed him that his job was to stand there and look pretty with his shirt off and smile adoringly at rinko kikuchi whenever she was onscreen, which he did fantastically. also idris elba and a narrative centered around a found family featuring a black father and a japanese daughter that culminates in the kind of love so profound that the last words she says to him don’t even need to be translated for a non-japanese-speaking audience.

fury road is a movie that was edited by a woman because george miller literally did not fucking trust a man to do it justice, and even our beloved sad puppy protaganist still has his moment where we all yell at him to just let furiosa and the girls in the truck you miserable bastard you all want the same thing and then they turn an MRA into a feminist willing to die for the cause, and they put naked women on the screen without making me want to curl up inside and die, and killed women to show us how that made other women feel, and brought literal fucking hellfire down on the patriarchy to grind them into rubble. also, ALSO, the only reason this ridiculous fucking plan even worked in the end was because LITERAL CHILDREN and enslaved women lowered the platform and opened the floodgates to water, which is essentially the same as salvation when you live in a post-nuclear desert hellscape run by god-kings who waste thousands of gallons of gasoline just to track down their escaped sex slaves. also actual polynesian actresses in a movie set in australia. also a complete lack of rape scene or discussion of sex, crude or otherwise. also the person who everybody knows is the protag of fury road in the same way everyone knows mako is the protag of pacific rim even though the trailers will do their best to convince the MRAs otherwise is an amputee driven by the same immense boiler of screaming fury that i, as an abuse victim and as a feminist and as someone who has had friends go through way worse shit than i did, feel on a regular basis, and we don’t need to know the full story of what happened; we know that she was kidnapped, we know her mother is dead, we know that it’s probably been twenty years of literal hell for her, and we know that she is not above dying to save four girls who yell at her when she tries to kill someone that has been sent to bring them back to immortan joe.

this is not the wink wink nudge nudge feminism of joss “i quit twitter bc feminists were harassing me” whedon. these are movies that make me feel like they are opening floodgates to stories where megan fox can show up onscreen and be taken seriously instead of objectified, and lucy liu can play any damn character she wants in reboots of stories that used to just be about arrogant white boys, and laverne cox doesn’t have to be asked what her fucking crotch looks like before people can hold a conversation with her.

pacific rim and fury road, as colorful (literally, there is an entire post on this site about modern hollywood and it’s shitty, drained-of-color-to-feel-”gritty” movies) narratives about hope and love, actually make me, a decrepit, sarcastic husk of a human being, 1) cry about two people nodding at each other and touching foreheads, and 2) actually believe that our cinema will one day stop being such a white sausagefest.

movies that can do that are a big deal.