lydia-gastrell:

kat2107:

meta-hemeralism:

snakegay:

tomibunny:

rottenlesbian:

rottenlesbian:

please stop reblogging sylvia plath poetry 

For ppl asking why she’s an anti black, anti Semite. She has used the n word and compared her depression to the holocaust

Even not counting her poetry her private journals are full of disgusting, overblown antisemitism. She didn’t just use Jewish people for her metaphors, she outright hated them irl and yet decided to use their suffering for her own gain

here’s a source with some quotes

okay, I’m Jewish and I appreciate this sentiment. and if someone wants to cut out Sylvia Plath, go for it, I get it.

But. by this logic we’d also need to stop reblogging TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare quotes. Virginia Woolf wrote anti-semetic things in her private journals, too. If you only want to read classic poets who liked Jews and black people, that’s fine, but like. good luck? Sylvia Plath isn’t an exception.

idk. Tumblr’s attitude of “consume nothing problematic” just doesn’t work if you’re part of a group that most culture-creators over the last few centuries have hated by default. For people actually in those groups, it’s not like the only two choices are 1) worship authors who hate you or 2) completely cut the majority of literature out of your life. You learn to read critically and acknowledge flaws where you find them.

anyway, as a Jewish woman, I would much rather see a version of this post that said “please read Sylvia Plath poetry critically because she’s anti black and antisemetic” than just “stop reblogging Sylvia Plath poetry.”

IMO, reblog Sylvia Plath all you want, just not unthinkingly.

Sometimes I fell like tumblr has put itself on the the extreme opposite of “consume stuff incritically”

“Don’t consume stuff instead of dealing with it.”

If I ignore its existence then I won’t have to take a layered view on it. 

But guys… anti-semitism is a thing and it’s been a rampant thing for centuries. You can’t ignore that the middle ages or the early 20th century existed. Or heck, the middle of the 20th century in the US. 

People always are a product of their times. And some times where just racist as fuck! That was normal! And that is something you have to look at and look at critically because these times will return. And very normal people who are talented and nice will have very horrible, unthinking opinions. 

That includes you, btw. 

So think instead of ignore.

My history professors were always trying to tell us that you CAN NOT view the past through a contemporary lens if you expect to have any kind of understanding of the past. And “understanding” does not mean acceptance, so let’s get that out of the way right now. 

 We have the privilege–yes, PRIVILEGE–of living in a time that is the product of other people’s grueling hard work, of centuries of people before us being arrested, beaten up, impoverished, KILLED so that we could stand on our high horses and be proud of growing up in the enlightenment they made for us. Any one of us unlucky enough to have been born 100, 200 year ago would like 99% be racists, anti Semites, and probably misogynists (yes, even minority groups, because anti Semitism and misogyny have long histories in black culture too) because the only way to not be all that in a world where it was so normal it was like believing in gravity was to be exceptional. I mean, beyond your time philosophical genius kind of  exceptional. For any of us to believe that we would just magically be all enlightened and woke if we hadn’t had the benefit of a world around us teaching us not to be is an insane level of arrogance. It would be like trust-fund Brad insisting he would still be a success even if he hadn’t inherited 80% of a company to start. No, Brad, someone did all that work before you were born buddy. 

Even the amazing people who were taking leaps to end various discriminations a century ago are still problematic. The white abolitionists were definitely racist by our standards, just not racist enough to want slavery (and most of them were insane Christian fundamentalists who had no tolerance for any other creed). But it would be insane and a gross dereliction of historical duty to just ignore these people and pretend they didn’t exist because they couldn’t magically meet all our privileged standards 170 years ago.

For fans of Rawhide and other Westerns

For a Few Dollars More, initial scene. A train speeding through deserted mountain country.

Colonel Mortimer: “I’m getting off at Tucumcari.”

Nervous train passenger: “But … this train doesn’t stop at Tucumcari.”

Colonel Mortimer, calmly pulling alarm cord: “This train will stop at Tucumcari.”

And on May 5 and 6 the present writer (travelling not by train, but in a minivan with similarly insane friends) will stop at Tucumcari, New Mexico, for a festival centred on Rawhide. Guests: children of the (still living) Clint Eastwood and of other (deceased) Rawhide actors such as Sheb Wooley and Paul Brinegar. Plus cattle drives, mock gunfights, chuckwagons, and so on.

Yee-haa.

pirateshelly:

One of the MANY things I find really cool about black sails season 2 (seriously, I think its absolutely the best season of any TV show ever) is they way they use Ned Lowe and peter Ashe as sort of bookend villains.

The season starts with this guy who looks and acts like he got lost on his way to the game of thrones set. They make it seem like he’s going to be the big bad of the season, he’s the epitome of cartoonish villainy. He’s got an evil scar, he gets a creepy villain monologue, he makes gross rapey threats, he carve a dudes head off in broad daylight, he is 100% aware of his own villain status… then his over the top psychotic antics get him killed three episodes in (in any other show he’d inexplicably last 5 seasons just to manufacture cheap tension and drama and it would be boring as hell)

Then there’s peter Ashe, the only other true (living at least) antagonist of the season, and he only shows up (in present time) for the last three episodes. If Lowe seems like a typical TV villain, Ashe is exactly what real world “villains” are. He doesn’t get a villain monologue, he doesn’t ACTIVELY do much of anything, and that’s kind of the point. Its terrifyingly easy for someone to be a peter Ashe. He’s a passive, lawful good citizen. He’ll act helpful when it doesn’t cost him anything, but the moment things get rough, he’ll throw his friends under the bus and say he had no choice. He may not be actively homophobic like Alfred Hamilton, but he’s also to weak to stand up to him, and for that the show treats him as just as much of a villain. He’s the ultimate bystander, horrible things happen because he steps back and lets them, not because he actively causes them, and I fucking LOVE that this show makes it very clear that that is just as bad.

Lowe was a red herring; the real villain of the season was just a dude who repeatedly allowed injustice happen because it was easy. THAT’S how you do an amazing and unsettlingly real villain, you don’t need cardboard cutout psychopaths.

Tbh this show never resorts to the lazy villain tropes that the majority of TV shows use, but season 2 does such an amazing job of teasing that cliche and then completely turning it on its head.

queerpyratess:

queerpyratess:

hey shoutout to fanfic writers who preface their fics with “english isn’t my first language so please excuse any mistakes!” and then proceeds to have flawless wonderful english that could make me weep

extra loud shoutout to fanfic writers who’s first language isn’t english and who doesn’t have perfect english when writing but still writes and publishes and want to share what’s in their hearts with fandom i see y’all and you’re amazing

I still think that instead of apologising for our mistakes, we are (almost) duty-bound to find friendly, reliable native English speakers who find our mistakes and make helpful suggestions. Everyone wins: us would-be Nabokovs and Conrads, the readers, and, last but not least, our fics.

slverjohn:

i decided to challenge myself and try to not write about 4×03 (there are already so many amazing oh-my-god-you’re-not-dead fics, and I’d constantly be comparing myself!), so have a post-Charlestown drabble

29. “I thought you were dead.”

Silver floats in and out of consciousness for almost a week after he loses the leg. The one constant – excepting the pain – each time he wakes, is Flint. He is always there: sometimes sitting next to Silver’s window bed, reading a book; sometimes working at his desk, glancing over what feels like every ten seconds; sometimes asleep on the hammock across the room, depending on the hour. 

He doesn’t remember Flint spending so much time in his cabin before: either something happened in Charlestown that lead to this self-imposed isolation, or Flint is watching over him, like some sort of angry, violent guardian angel. 

This prompts him to imagine Flint in a toga and holding a lyre, and Silver very nearly snorts out loud (that it is Flint, however indirectly, who has prompted a smile from him since he’s lost his leg, is not lost on Silver).

Still, the thought that Flint cares enough to sit with him as he recovers, it’s – well, it’s more than Silver deserves, to say the least, no matter how it makes his cheeks warm.

So when Flint finally tells him he’s been voted quartermaster, tells him he’s essentially trapped here (we’ll take care of you, they’d said, and oh, how it haunts him) tells him they’re nearing Nassau, Silver in turn tells the most half-assed lie he has in years.

Flint suspects him, he can tell. They’ve both become too in tune with one another these past few weeks for Silver not to notice the minute tics in his face, the twitches and furrowing of his brow. Flint, in turn, surely notices that Silver cannot bear to meet his eyes, how his breathing has gone tight not simply because of the pain. 

Maybe if he’s lucky Flint will cut him down right here. Maybe Flint will kill him where he lies, and Silver won’t have to spend the rest of his days as an invalid.

At this point, Silver’s not sure he’d even try to talk his way out of it.

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hotniatheron:

hdhfaljfdlak sorry for taking so long to answer this

————————————

They’re alone, for once.

It’s the middle of the night, which could explain why they’re alone, and they’re laying drunk on a beach under bright moonlight whispering stupid secrets to each other.

“One time,” Flint says, before giggling. Giggling, that’s how far gone he is. “One time, when I was perhaps 15 or 16, a friend and I-we snuck into the galley and-and we glued down all the cutlery. Glued it right to the wall and cook was so mad we didn’t eat anything but hardtack for a whole week.”

Silver turns onto his side and studies how young Flint looks when he smiles, worry lines replaced with laughter. His hair is still short and wispy, but it’s growing longer, curling softly in the humidity.

“I went swimming naked right past a convent once,” Silver says, propping his head up on his hand. “Nearly sent the Mother Superior to an early grave.”

“Bullshit,” Flint says, flipping over on his stomach to look at Silver.

“It’s the truth!” Silver squawks. “I’d never lie about such a thing.”

By that, he means it’s got at least one piece of truth to it. Flint just doesn’t know if it’s the convent, the act, or Silver himself that doesn’t belong in the story.

“I’ll demonstrate!’ Silver says, sitting up. He struggles to get up for a moment, unsteady on his crutch in the dark, and then stands and starts tugging his shirt up over his head.

“What are you doing?” Flint squawks, sitting up. “You can’t just strip on the beach!”

“I can, and I will,” Silver says, tossing his shirt in Flint’s face. “Hold this.”

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