hundondestiny:

seashellronan:

seashellronan:

ireland sending aid to native americans affected by the corona virus in return for their help during the famine that is truly iconic, big brain activity

after some more research i should clarify that it’s actually individual irish people donating to a gofund me to help members of the navajo nation in remembrance of the generosity of the choctaw tribe during the famine, which is very cool here’s an article

“from Irish donor, Pat Hayes, sent from Ireland across the ocean: “From Ireland, 170 years later, the favour is returned! To our Native American brothers and sisters in your moment of hardship.”

i cannot explain how quickly i started crying 

kat-har:

captainlordauditor:

marzipanandminutiae:

jg-piff:

starshine-honey:

jg-piff:

starshine-honey:

fakewant:

mycoolstoryworld:

lennythepope:

y’all really recommend books like: title, there are gay characters, enemies to lovers, young adult, written by poc

not once do i ever see a summary

What more info do you need?

A SUMMARY

WHAT DO U MENA SUMMARY WHAT ELSE MATTERS ITS GAY POC AND ENEMIES TO LOVERS HOW OFTEN DO U CONE ACROSS THAT

i want to know what its about mainly. is it a romance? is there plot besides the romance? is it realistic fiction? sci fi? fantasy? historical? future? alternate history? whats the tone? what are the themes? what are the main characters’ NAMES?

I- it’s gay the gay

i value queer characters too. but i also want to know WHAT THE BOOK I’M READING IS ABOUT.

“GAY AND/OR RACIALLY DIVERSE” IS NOT A GENRE. nor is it an indicator of quality

do you know how many times I’ve been recommended a book solely because “it’s queer fantasy!”

do you know how many times those books have been so poorly written that I couldn’t finish them

Mostly, I want to know the tone. A 19th century war story isn’t gonna do it for me when I’m in the mood for a lighthearted austenesque romance - and those are both historical. A star warsy space romp isn’t gonna do it if I want to read about interplanetary political negotiations - and those are both sci fi. A fun gratuitious don’t-think-about-it-too-hard action story is not the same as a dark and complicated mob drama. A suspenseful thriller will bore me if I’m looking for a fast paced spy novel.

I spent several months last winter looking for mysteries with queer content. Not queer- happen-to-be-mysteries, good MYSTERIES that were queer. I think I tried a dozen authors before I found one where I was able to get beyond two books. (It was Michael Nava. Holy crap he’s good. Excellent sense of place, smart prose, good character detail, smart enough mystery, real growth for the protagonist, and something to say. )

The “these people write queer mysteries, read them!” lists were not much help. The lists written by mystery readers and writers, which concentrated on plot, character, tone were the ones that helped.

this is the weirdest complaint because book summaries are pretty widely available from publishers/authors/retailers/libraries? like just google the book title + author if it sounds interesting? or follow different bookbloggers? people on this blue hellsite are going to scream about their feels, not write you a fourth grade book report. 

“POC f/f enemies-to-lovers” is a starting point and is honestly more interesting to me than something like “Two girls on rival soccer teams learn that winning is not the most important thing.” The second one is not going to make me notice the book and look up more information that would lead me to finding out it’s a queer romance starring poc. The first one does make me want to look up a plot summary.

or maybe it’s a generation thing bc “LGBT” as a marketing category is pretty new, it used to be that unless it was Literature about Sad Gays, it wouldn’t be marketed as LGBT and if you wanted, say, queer sci fi, you’d have to go by word of mouth or random people on the internet being like “guys this book is gay!!”

and if you’re looking for something like books about qpoc, the pickings are incredibly slim and you want to know that sort of thing up front.

plus tropes do communicate plot and tone? it’s just an easier shorthand? 

or maybe someone has made a dozen posts about a book they like and don’t feel the need to include a summary in each one? Writing summaries is HARD, people, I had to do 200+ per quarterly newsletter at my old job and it was absolutely grueling. 

describing books in terms of official summaries and describing books by AO3 tags serve different purposes/appeal to different audiences and are both valid. 

theyoungestwhateleydaughter-dea:

teahimbo:

pir8core:

teahimbo:

roosting:

roosting:

behind every girlboss is another, bigger girlboss

they call this a pyramid scheme i think

I think they prefer the term mlm

i think you’re thinking of wlw

Wulti level warketing scheme

good work, gals

tmirek-nedara:

tochaoticallygo:

tochaoticallygo:

The backdrops in TOS are certainly a choice however I do appreciate how often they have characters stand in front of a bi flag gradient

Kirk asking if there are men on the planet while essentially standing in front of a bi pride flag is so iconique

i think about this every day

stantler:

stantler:

I am one of those gays who craves more m/f friendships and would like for interactions between men and women in Media to not have forced romance inserted awkwardly but I have noticed people go the absolute hardest about a man and a woman remaining platonic besties when they’re of different races. And it’s just weird cuz I’ve talked about this before but this is already like the one circumstance where writers will often go out of their way to not turn a m/f dynamic into a romance

To be clear, this is about how potential interracial relationships in fiction are very often not afforded consideration or respect either by creators or by fans of a work. I enjoy m/f friendships as much as the next person but I’m unnerved by the number of people who consistently and most adamantly go out of their way to shoot down romance when it’s interracial

sashacore:

I think like, while Lil Nas X is tearing apart a lot of troll responses he’s getting on twitter for laughs on purpose, I also definitely think we should be careful about how we frame that, how we repost that, and whether that’s the thing we focus on here, because the sheer volume and maliciousness of the harassment (from the likes of Fox News and establishments such as that) he’s receiving isn’t without emotional consequences. he even stated that much:

[ID: tweet by Lil Nas X stating: “i’ll be honest all this backlash is putting an emotional toll on me. i try to cover it with humour but it’s getting hard. my anxiety is higher than ever and stream call me by your name on all platforms now!” /end ID]

like we should def appreciate his creativity & his incredible sense of humour in the face of all this, but I think we shouldn’t forget the extreme severity of the backlash and hatred in response to a bold and groundbreaking piece of black gay art, that showcases black gay sexuality in a way that is almost never seen, certainly by not such a famous musician, and not erase the fact that the amount of hate he’s getting here is both unjust, racially-motivated, and almost definitely tremendously painful and upsetting? or else we risk reducing black performers and artists to mere objects of entertainment and fail to see black performers & artists as people, human beings.

kaijutegu:

falseinnocencereturns:

“Just remember, jumping on a regular bison and yelling “yip yip” will not make it fly. But you will.”

headspace-hotel:

a set of somewhat related things I’ve been thinking a lot about:

• As often as people say “google is free” on the internet, it seems like more people would have written about the experience of actually trying to learn about social issues by googling them and how much it fucking sucks.
• like i very much did grow up in the Bible Belt in an EXTREMELY conservative community. Like, the bland, “centrist” moderate liberal type of person people on here say is basically indistinguishable from a Republican? people i was around as a young teenager would consider them dangerously close to being a communist. Both of my parents have had significant portions of their social circles completely ostracize them for not being trump supporters. Not even for having “liberal” views, for QUESTIONING the idea that Donald trump is God’s gift to man
• what I’m saying is, I very much did have to learn about things by aimless googling and it is. not like people say it is
• When you google things like “how do I help fight against racism,” you get a combination of resources. many of which are rather jargony for people who aren’t culturally familiar with “The Left” or whatever. And yet. they’re mostly the same set of very basic suggestions, many of which have unclear concrete application
• I’m losing my patience with how much “activism” is expected to center around social media presence. like so much of what supposedly answers “how do I help fight against racism” or whatever basic question revolves around things you do online instead of in real life. In particular, “listen to minority voices” is basically just “follow people on social media.” It’s so internet-centered. A lot of the advice is suited more to a “people freely interacting in an open plaza where we talk about bigotry and inequality” kind of thing rather than the kind of interactions you have in real life with people.
• at the same time, a lot of the guidelines about handling these conversations are so badly suited to the internet.
• Like. On the internet, people’s identity isn’t always public or easy to find out, nor should it be, but no one seems to want to…admit…???…that this makes putting into practice “centering” and listening to certain voices kind of hard. Online, people have no idea who you are unless you tell them. You very much can lie if you want. It has always seemed to me like social issues conversations are better to have in real life with people you actually have a relationship with. Not that we can’t have them online (obviously) but we are limited.
• Furthermore, though I agree with, and try to put into practice, the idea that basically people know more about the bigotry and discrimination they face than I do, and therefore I should listen to minority voices and let my viewpoints be guided by them…being a semi-popular blogger who interacts with and gets messages from loads of people means that it’s basically impossible for me to practice that online because this is the internet, where if you can think of an opinion, it exists and someone is telling you that you should die over it. I have been called a bigot over the most batshit fucking bonkers cuckoo for coco puffs things under the fucking sun.
• like i have been called a racist and colonialist for believing that ADHD, as a label, corresponds to a real thing in my brain. I still have the screenshots. I know I’m not SUPPOSED to be like “yeah, I don’t think that’s correct,” but what can you do.
• (Do any of you remember that big post a while back where someone was claiming that a Van Gogh painting was blackface, and it turned out that they were arguing that literally all art by non-black people was blackface? I still have no idea if they were a troll or what but it was a Thing, and a real demonstration of how someone who is a malicious troll or just bonkers can just say shit. I don’t think anyone took that one seriously, but still.)
• basically real interactions in the real world are so much different than the internet and way more important and productive in my opinion but our ideas of how “activism” is supposed to work and how to be an ally is so internet-ified while at the same time not really working all that well online. both in terms of learning about things and about interacting with people. can we just admit that the internet is a REALLY socially weird place and by no means the baseline for How Human Interactions Work.