thebroombroom

[thebroombroom]

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

[thebroombroom]

I’m sorry but if there is one thing the Tumblr left needs crucially, it’s the ability to celebrate.

I remember when marriage equality was called and there were waves of rainbows and love wins posts. When we successfully defeated Donald Trump, there was lukewarm relief, a reminder that you were only allowed one or maybe two days to celebrate and then it was back to work. That is if you were even a good person for voting Biden. We never did settle if he was better than Trump. (We did.). We didn’t celebrate student loan debt relief or any of the accomplishments of the Biden administration, or any of the times Trump was blocked, or other countries succeeding in keeping fascists out of office. Who cares if we had successes? It’s not good enough. Back to work!

And this anti-celebratory attitude stretches back to the past. On the 100th anniversary of female suffrage in America, we were reminded that not all women had the vote and so we weren’t allowed to celebrate. The only post I saw about Juneteenth was reminding us that there were enslaved people who were killed instead of freed and therefore celebrating the end of chattel slavery was wrong, and besides, we have prison labor so nothing really changed or got better and there’s nothing to celebrate anyway. Trans Day of Visibility comes with Trans Day of Remembrance so that people don’t fill the tags with hate crimes and death. So on and so forth. Nothing gets better. Nothing changes. Back to work!

So of course when we have a major setback, we fall apart and have to start frantic damage control. Frantic discourse ensues over how much people are allowed to unplug before it becomes bad and selfish. Yes, maybe you can have this one day off Mr. Cratchit but you better be here and miserable early the next morning. Like abusive bosses always insisting you squeeze out more, more, more, and any achievement is just proof you were lazy the other times and impetus for more work.

If we are never allowed to acknowledge any of our victories, how are we supposed to survive our defeats?

[thebroombroom]

Leslie Feinberg on trans exclusion in feminist spaces.

“We’re in danger of losing what the entire second wave of feminism, what the entire second wave of women’s liberation was built on, and that was ‘Biology is not destiny’. ‘One is not born a woman,’ Simone de Beauvoir said, ‘one becomes one’. Now there’s some place where transsexual women and other women intersect. Biological determinism has been used for centuries as a weapon against women, in order to justify a second-class and oppressed status. How on Earth, then, are you going to pick up the weapon of biological determinism and use it to liberate yourself? It’s a reactionary tool.”

From TransSisters: The Journal of Transsexual Feminism, issue 7, volume 1. 1995.

[thebroombroom]

[thebroombroom]

Lovely Fairywren (Malurus amabilis), female, family Maluridae, order Passeriformes, Australia

photograph by David O'Brien

[thebroombroom]

secret hug techniques to be used only in dire emergencies

[thebroombroom]

heart - shaped scallion found In pho . reblog for good luck & yummy soup 500000 forwver

[thebroombroom]

Link for full article below.

[thebroombroom]

Glassbee on Etsy

[thebroombroom]

*in a rap battle* i wonder who your mother could have been if she never had you

[thebroombroom]

"For the valour of the Edain the Elves shall ever remember as the ages lengthen, marvelling that they gave life so freely of which on earth they had so little." - Ulmo to Tuor (The Fall of Gondolin)

How tragic, how heartbreaking and bittersweet, that the greatest gift of undying friendship of men to elves must be cut short by death.

How heart-wrenching for the Eldar to linger on with the memory of that gift, a hole torn the flowing fabric of their ageless years, a friend never returning, never to meet again beyond the western sea.

What choice do they have, but to return this gift to the children of their dearest friends, fleeting though their time may be.

[thebroombroom]

On hope

night walk, franz wright// hope in the dark, rebecca solnit// ? // ? // just give me a reason, pink// shake it off, taylor swift// @ hiddengemm_ on x // @mounaks // to be made whole, ada limon// @garcavisconde // jane massey// orange juice, noah kahan// why why why, shawn mendes// ?// august, taylor swift

[thebroombroom]

Mel really stayed true to herself through it all. That's so rare for a character with this kind of arc. She never let go of her compassion, even with being kidnapped and tortured. It didn't harden her into someone unrecognizable. I did joke about a villain arc because that's what a character like that usually gets when it's time to be calculated and kill the thing that needs killing.

But Mel didn't need that to be badass, embrace her powers, and cut off the head of the dragon even though it happened to be her mother - her mother who thought she was so weak just because she wasn't brutal.

She is the wolf but only out of necessity. She can make the hard calls. She can even deliver death, but she won't without trying everything else first.

That's a leader. She's a leader her mother could never fathom, and now she has her army.

Arcane man... good shit.

[thebroombroom]

i hate to be that guy, but the idea that gender, sex, and sexuality are ontologically pure concepts that can be rigidly defined if we simply police our language enough (our english language, because of course) is—i cannot stress this enough—a total waste of time. you may as well spend your afternoons teaching a brick how to swim

[thebroombroom]

do you ever see paleolithic art and go “oh fuck that’s good” like they hadn’t developed agriculture or the wheel but god damn could they paint horses real good

[thebroombroom]

nothing like a family crisis to bring estranged family back together

[thebroombroom]

jayce enduring a symbolic rendition of viktor's trauma is so painful and so, so clever.

being stricken down and immobilized through sheer accident or, in viktor's case, a cruelly random quirk that caused his disability.

then physically dragging himself from the lowest level of zaun to piltover, much like how viktor spent his youth reaching toward the promise piltover offered, but only if he could "pull himself up by the boot straps" and get there on his own. socioeconomic forces working against him be damned.

i appreciate arcane reminding us of viktor's origins - the reason he is so called to help people and, eventually, save himself - and putting jayce through the ringer - the contrast between he and viktor's lived experiences is front and center throughout season 1. the writers send jayce, and the audience, on a grueling journey to contemplate those experiences and how they've manifested in these intertwined characters.