i think the most egregious example of the manic pixie dream girl trope was this play i but I just remembered seeing it, several years ago…
it was about this sad-sack guy driving across the country to try and reunite his old band for one last show
he’s accompanied by this girl who he was in the band with, back in the day… and he was in love with her then, and she’s cool & smart & funny & talks only to him for the entire play, even when the rest of the band joins him on the drive
& at the end of the play it turns out that she was a ghost the whole time, nobody else in the play could see or hear her, & the ‘last show’ he kept referring to is actually going to be her funeral wake bcs she died..
That her ghost had accompanied them on this trip bcs he was grieving & she wanted to help him let go of her…
which, you know, was a surprise & it was really emotional & legit the play was pretty good
But I just started thinking about it randomly…
And I keep being struck by the fact that the play only works if the entire audience is so used to the idea that a female character would literally only speak to the main male character for the entire length of a narrative.
Would only converse with him, interact with him, even when there were other people around.
That even as he talked about what he was doing next, she never discussed their future goals. She never touched any props or anyone other than him.
That nothing she did or said would genuinely have anything to do with herself as a person, except in the context of how he felt about her.
The entire play hinges on the audience not expecting anything hinky about a female character who acts like that,
& most of the audience bought it, hook, line, and sinker.
even I did. there was genuine feeling of surprise in the room
and I just…
A woman can literally be an incorporeal ghost & as long as she is emotionally supportive of a man we see her as a fully realistically person
if that isn’t a sad indictment of how female characters get treated idk what is, honestly
So a Greek mythology headcanon where Aphrodite can appear either male or female, and she looks like a really fucking sexy guy to gay dudes because that’s who they find attractive
And some Greek bro is out with his buddies when she shows up and he’s all “Wow look at how ripped this dude is no homo” and his buddies are all “What the fuck man that’s a beautiful lady” and that’s how he finds out he’s hella gay
OMG you just opened a door to some amazing head canons How do you see Aphrodite if you’re ace, aro, Demi, pan, bi???
I bet if you’re bi/ pan, she shifts between genders.
If you’re ace, instead of looking super hot, she looks pretty ordinary, but still aesthetically pleasing, and she has a very kind face and a sweet voice and intelligent eyes. So, romantically appealing.
If you’re demi then she starts off at regular pretty level, but gets steadily hotter as you fall for her.
If you’re aro-ace, she’s invisible (and it pisses her off SO MUCH but she can’t do anything about it).
As an aro ace I strongly approve of this unique opportunity to piss off a Greek god without being murdered or getting turned into a tree or some shit
I hate to be the one to break this to you, dude, but as a general rule, women don’t pretend to virulently hate men they’re secretly in love with as some sort of elaborate courtship ritual. That’s a trope we made up to justify why the male protagonist always gets the girl in the end even when it’s starkly at odds with prior characterisation. In real life, if she acts like she thinks you’re a creep, it’s because she thinks you’re a creep!
People shit on clicktivism or online social justice shit a lot but here’s the thing:
I’ve been on this garbage website for three years as of this month and I can say with absolute certainty that a lot of what I now know about intersectionality and gender and race and class and ableism can be directly traced to this website. It’s because tumblr (and Twitter to a lesser extent because of the character limit) is a really accessible way to see mini essays explaining shit to me from tons of different perspectives.
Like you get these really digestible posts that clearly spell out either theoretical concepts or their practical applications. And I sure as shit don’t get that in school or in my daily interactions.
I feel like people shit on clicktivism because they think it stops there – with me reading stuff on a screen. But it doesn’t because I for one take the knowledge I gain here and transfer it into the world at large: my interactions with my friends and family, my conduct in the classroom, and the entertainment media I consume.
Real-world revolution has never once just fallen out of the sky, guys. It always starts with an exchange of ideas. Tumblr and platforms like it facilitate that exchange.
So like don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re less of an activist because you started learning shit from social media. Social media is a gift to activism.
I've started making my own bread, and I've been doing it long enough now that, even when it's a total pain in the tchotchkes, I'd rather do it than eat store-bought bread.
If you want to build the best sandwiches, this simple rule of thumb will ensure that every sandwich you make turns out great.
Never-poor people see a long list of community resource contact numbers and think ‘Wow, so much help available to those in need!’
Poor people see that list and think ‘How many wrong numbers and ‘no we don’t take Medicaid’ calls am I gonna have to make to confirm my suspicion that there is no help available, just agencies that look like help?’
Truth. Wrong numbers, we don’t take your coverage, you have Medicaid so we can’t take you, your income is a dollar over our limits… Ten thousand and one variations of “We can’t help you. We’d like to.. but we can’t.”
See, I’d watch a JDrama featuring hordes of nameless cowboy antagonists. Like not even joking, they could have a lieutenant who wears spurs all the time inappropriately and do kickboxing to show he’s more dangerous and better trained than the others.
It could be set in Kobe and the cowboys could be rustlers trying to steal fancy beef cattle for their American megafarm cattle baron employer loosely based on a telephone game version of Cliven Bundy only he’s running Monsanto.
…sweetie, how has no one weaponized you yet?
Well, for one I’m not sure -how- I could be weaponized. Unless someone made a weapon that could convert weird little fiction pieces and quirky story ideas into energy.
You could called it a sort of Narrative Device, if you will.
THANK YOU FOR THE CHALLENGE WHEN THE NICE MEN WITH THE VAN GET THERE DO NOT FIGHT SHHH SHHH IT WILL ALL BE OKAY
“I can get you mermaids. What were you doing before you - how did you say you got here?”
“I looked under my bed for monsters and fell.”
Scribble scribble. “Before that, what were you doing?”
“We just moved and -”
“Hang on -” Papers rustle. “Which of the following best describes your attitude: excitement about your new opportunities, apprehension about your new school or neighborhood, resentment at loss of old friends and familiar settings, or other?”
“….what does resentment mean?”
“It means you’re mad that they were taken away.”
“That one.”
“Okay. And, fingerprints here in case you take longer on your quest than you’re supposed to and we need to do a locator spell; and would you like a dagger, magic wand, animal companion, or bow and arrows?”
“I only get one?”
“You can combine the animal companion with another option if you fill out form 37-J -”
“I’ll just take the magic wand.”
“There’s a bin of them by the door; take one and then recite this fairy-summoning chant to call a guide fairy and be led to your destination.” Stamp, check, peeling of carbon paper. “This is your copy. Next!”
Watching this latest political campaign and, more than ever, watching youth internet memes be a part of the narratives of the campaign, not just on tumblr, but in the news and in the campaigns itself is really interesting.
Mostly it’s really interesting watching candidates try to take control of the memes, try to make their own memes, and so on. And not understanding why it doesn’t work.
Bernie Sanders gets a fun bird meme while Tud Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. Why? I mean, is it just down to luck. Would anyone have gotten disney princess and chosen one jokes if a bird had landed on their podium? Did these inexplicable millennials just pick a candidate at random to call the Zodiac Killer and it stuck?
And the fundamental mistake I see being made about millennials, and the youth vote, and memes, over and over, is one of causality.
This isn’t just true in the recent political campaign, by the way, it’s also true in corporate marketing and so on.
They seem to think the causality is that a great meme creates a narrative which creates youth opinion and youth vote. That the kids see a meme, they laugh at the meme, and from that meme they form their opinion.
Where the real causality is that the kids have an opinion and then they create the memes themselves around what they already think.
So the trick isn’t to get the memes on your side and then you’ll get the youth on your side. The trick is to treat the youth like intelligent humans with real concerns and stakes and listen to them and then when you get the youth on your side they’ll make memes for you.
As part of Trans Awareness Week, GLAAD launched a trans microaggression photo project. Microaggressions are the subtle disparaging remarks that invalidate a trans person’s identity. This project is meant to raise awareness about how these oppressive statements, while often said with good intentions, prove to be the most damaging.
To view more photos from the campaign, click here!
1. Acquire phone 2. Accidentally lock phone. 3. Ask phone manufacturer to unlock phone. 4. Whine when manufacturer points out that NO. 5. Become increasingly aggressive with manufacturer, insisting that they make everything in the world less safe in order to help you cover up your own fuck up. 6. Discover you actually can unlock phone, I can only assume by accident. 7. Break phone even more.
Peter Joseph on structural violence, from this video.
Brilliant
Spot on. Like Coretta Scott King said, I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.
We didn’t have a word for our, as you guys call, gay/lesbian people. So we coined that word as an umbrella for all our tribes. We never said, “Well, you’re transgender. You’re bisexual. You’re lesbian.” We never knew those terms. Those are all from Western culture, you know, LGBTQ and all that. So on some level, it’s about getting rid of labels. Those terms were forced upon us.
Excess food is a serious issue in the US. After paper, food scraps are the nation’s second largest source of waste, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Leftovers fill 18 percent of landfills and make up over 30 million tons of what is sent to dumps each year.
“Imagine a football stadium filled to its brim. That’s how much food goes wasted every single day in America.”
Komal Ahmad created a nonprofit service called Feeding Forward. Through a website and mobile app, Feeding Forward matches businesses that have surplus food with nearby homeless shelters. Here’s how it works: when companies or event planners have surplus food, they tap the Feeding Forward app and provide details of their donation. A driver is dispatched to quickly pick up the leftovers and deliver them to food banks. After the Bite Silicon Valley food-tech conference in early June, leftovers gathered at this event fed more than 4,279 people at eight different shelters and food banks.
BMI is a poor indicator of health. Studies show that 50% of people classified as overweight or obese in the 2005-2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were quite healthy, and over 30% of those classified at a normal weight were found to be unhealthy. Source
“The basis of the BMI was devised by Adolphe Quetelet from 1830 to 1850 during which time he developed what he called “social physics”.
#1- social physics? Not a thing.
#2- Why are we using a scale from the 19th century when we have actual medical tests- like X-rays and blood tests- that will actually tell us if people are sick and what is actually wrong with them?
In the 19th Century, people thought that masturbation caused sickness and that you could cure people from jerking it by eating Corn Flakes.
Like, are we still leeching people?
It is kind of hilarious to me when fat haters scream about science when they know zip and when the actual science isn’t on their side. History isn’t on their side either.
Tony: Don’t get us wrong, helping people is the name of the game. We do this for a good reason and we know the consequences. But when the earthquakes over, we’re the ones that have to deal with the aftershock.
