ftmshepard

[ftmshepard]

In recent years, there has been a rush on the internet to supply image descriptions and to call out those who don’t. This may be an example of community accountability at work, but it’s striking to observe that those doing the most fierce calling out or correcting are sighted people. Such efforts are largely self-defeating. I cannot count the times I’ve stopped reading a video transcript because it started with a dense word picture. Even if a description is short and well done, I often wish there were no description at all. Get to the point, already! How ironic that striving after access can actually create a barrier. When I pointed this out during one of my seminars, a participant made us all laugh by doing a parody: “Mary is wearing a green, blue, and red striped shirt; every fourth stripe also has a purple dot the size of a pea in it, and there are forty-seven stripes—”

“You’re killing me,” I said. “I can’t take any more of that!”

Now serious, she said it was clear to her that none of that stuff about Mary’s clothes mattered, at least if her clothes weren’t the point. What mattered most about the image was that Mary was holding her diploma and smiling. “But,” she wondered, “do I say, Mary has a huge smile on her face as she shows her diploma or Mary has an exuberant smile or showing her teeth in a smile and her eyes are crinkled at the edges?”

It’s simple. Mary has a huge smile on her face is the best one. It’s the don’t-second-guess-yourself option. My thinking around this issue is enriched by the philosopher Brian Massumi’s concept of “esqueness.” He exemplifies it by discussing a kid who plays a tiger:

One look at a tiger, however fleeting and incomplete, whether it be in the zoo or in a book or in a film or video, and presto! the child is tigerized… The perception itself is a vital gesture. The child immediately sets about, not imitating the tiger’s substantial form as he saw it, but rather giving it life—giving it more life. The child plays the tiger in situations in which the child has never seen a tiger. More than that, it plays the tiger in situations no tiger has ever seen, in which no earthly tiger has ever set paw.

Just as the child and an actual tiger are not one bit alike, the words Mary has a huge smile on her face have nothing in common with the picture of Mary holding her diploma. Yet the tiger announces something to the world, its essence, and a kid can become tiger-ized and be tiger-esque, their every act shouting, I am a tiger. The picture of Mary at her graduation is shouting something, and the words Mary has a huge smile on her face are also shouting something. It is at the level beyond each actuality, in the swirl that each stirs up, that the two meet.

(from Against Access, by John Lee Clark - link in notes)

[ftmshepard]

everyone shut up and look at this

[ftmshepard]

well well well … if it isnt harry potter … the boy him lived … said father mouth oil racistly

[ftmshepard]

You promise you wont laugh at me even though my head is a baby bottle nipple?

[ftmshepard]

weird vibes aren't exactly rare at an antique mall but this one stall w/haunted energy had a sign with phrasing that has been stuck in my head for days lol

GIRLY STUFF FOR THE DAMSEL

BITS OF GLAMOUR FOR MADEMOISELLE

[ftmshepard]

Greg “I don’t want to fuck him” Davies, everyone

[ftmshepard]

Full credit goes to the incredible @squisherific.bsky.social for capturing this gloriously homoerotic moment on film.

[ftmshepard]

“-part of me, would quite like to fuck him”

“You’re not used to seeing it with trousers, are you?”

- Greg Davies

A partially coloured piece

[ftmshepard]

Inspired by the treasure hunt video clue where they danced together at Ed Gamble's wedding 🤍

[ftmshepard]

[ftmshepard]

Been seeing a handful of terf posts reblogged by folks who I am assuming are reading them as feminist, so for reference: a really easy way to root out cryptoterf posts is by blocking the tags radfem safe, terf safe and radblr, among others. If you can stomach it, find a terf blog and block any terf-related tags they use. I'm usually pretty judicious about blocking but repeat cryptoterf posting is a no-go. Don't spread their garbage unknowingly.

[ftmshepard]

biggest leaf in the world rn exists somewhere and the plant that grew it knows it. its letting that thing hang

[ftmshepard]

[ftmshepard]

lol *creates a shrine to something obscure and unimportant

[ftmshepard]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong

[ftmshepard]

our spiritually elevated rejection of canon vs their intellectually dishonest refusal to engage with the text

[ftmshepard]

image i am in love with