What, You Egg?

idk man the nervous system makes me kinda nervous

The creator of these images is Matt Bernstein, one of my favorite educators online -- he makes incredibly clear, forceful collections of information like this one. He's queer, has fantastic nails, and has done a lot of education recently from his perspective as a Jewish person on why supporting Palestine is so important. Here's a link to this post, which he created for World AIDS Day on 12/1/23.

I feel so blessed by these photos

And thus, Icarus fell

visual gag where someone is thrown against a stained glass window and lands in the exact same pose as the holy figure depicted on it

I’m so sick and fucking tired of people removing mentions of Mercutio being gay and citing “there’s no evidence in the text” as their reason. Romeo and Juliet is not just literature, it is a play. It is theatre. And theatre is not at all about the text. Theatre is about the ambiguity; the room for every actor and director from high school to Broadway to make their own interpretation. And there is a history that you cannot deny of Mercutio being interpreted as gay. Baz Lurrman’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet just being the tip of the iceberg. Mercutio’s character almost always has a level of flamboyance that LGBT+ people recognize in themselves and that lends itself well to this interpretation. To see Shakespeare only through the lens of the text (of which practically every line could be debated, and translations vary depending on location, time period, and the positioning of the stars) is to see less than half of it. If William “Bill the Bisexual” Shakespeare wanted us to think like that he would have published his work as epic poems or something.

I have yet to meet a performance of romeo and juliet that makes mercutio in any way straight

still reading frankenstein and i completely forgot that theres a part where victors wrapping up doing devious deeds on a sparsely inhabited island off the shore of england and he loads all his mad scientist shit into a rowboat and pushes off into the water and then fucking falls asleep with no navigational tools and when he wakes up hes like, adrift with no land in sight and hes like ‘FUCK my creation!!!!!’ even though the monster had absolutely nothing to do with getting him lost in the middle of the fucking english channel and he starts lamenting about how hes going to die and his family is never going to see him again and hes going to go to davey jones locker or whatever because hes been without potable water in a rowboat for like 4 hours and then he sees land and hes like ‘oh thank god im saved!!!’ and he gets to shore and is met with an angry mob who thinks he murdered someone and hes like ‘but where is english hospitality?????’ and theyre like ‘this is ireland you dumb slut’ and as theyre marching him to the magistrate hes like ‘i was still thirsty but did not want to show my weakness……’ like could you even imagine

Frankenstein is an unflinchingly realistic portrayal of the highly specialized form of stupid that comes from being told for your entire childhood that you’re a world-changing genius who can solve every problem because you’re so smart, but now you’re in college and you have depression and you keep fucking everything up because being good at reading science books when you were 12 doesn’t actually translate into making smart life choices and you’re constantly beating yourself up about your horrible failures but you couldn’t possibly ask anyone for help, and in fact the idea doesn’t even cross your mind because obviously you will be able to handle it this time because you’re a world-changing genius who can solve every problem, and consequently you keep right on catastrophically fucking everything up, and I don’t think it gets enough credit for that.

Byron: Where did you find the inspiration to create such a wretched man?

Mary, who has been stuck in a house with him for weeks: No idea, mate 😑

bat mosaic at the rijksmuseum you are all i think about 💖

[image description: a mosaic of a smiling bat flying in front of a full moon. end id]

Hehehehehehehehehe

heading towards the point of no return

rings + art