They: she's just *pretending* to be a martyr, really it's just a publicity stunt/she could have avoided this/she really wants to be famous.
Me: oh my GOD, how did you *think* martyrdom worked?

The most-enthusiastic Trump backers began arriving at the stadium at dawn, hoping to get a spot close to the stage. The first in line were Keith Quackenbush, 54, and Bill Hart, 46, co-workers at a retail giant in Pensacola, Fla.

“I’m telling you, everyone who is a worker at our store, they’re excited about Trump,” Quackenbush said. “I don’t care what race or gender, whatever age — they love Trump. This is a movement.”

– – –

But none have put on a show like Trump. Friday night resembled something between a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert and the Daytona 500. People came to see a celebrity, Trump, but also to hear his fiery call to revolutionize the nation’s politics. Many attendees said they had never attended a presidential campaign event.

Cheryl Burns, 60, was on a road trip from California when she heard that Trump would be in Alabama. She turned her car around and got in line, warning people of what happened to states when liberals took them over.

“There is no more California,” Burns said. “It’s now international, lawless territory. Everything is up for grabs. Illegal aliens are murdering people there. People are being raped. Trump isn’t lying about anything — the rest of the country just hasn’t found out yet.”

As the sun began to set, the sweaty throngs in the stadium snapped their heads toward the sky as the roar of a jet engine pierced the air. Here it was, gliding toward them above the Friday night lights: a gleaming Boeing 757 with “T-R-U-M-P” stretched across its navy blue body, circling twice and dipping its wing toward the sloped stadium bleachers.

The crowd roared its approval to Trump as his jet tilted away to land at a nearby airport. Minutes later, he was whisked in a caravan of SUVs past sleepy neighborhoods and the shipyard-lined coast of the Deep South to the surreal political festival.

“This is history happening right before our eyes,” said Laura Teague of Mobile, one of the few black attendees at the rally. “I’m going to help Trump make history.”

March 13 - The Tyrant is now at Lyon. Fear and Terror seized all at his appearance.

frog-and-toad-are-friends:

I’m reading Don Quixote for my world literature class and apparently when it was first published in 1605 it was world-changingly popular, one of the first “popular novels” as we know it today, and there were all sorts of people who were writing and publishing their own unofficial fan-sequels to Don Quixote which was basically the first fan-fiction, and then in 1615 the original author wrote an official sequel in which Don Quixote reads a piece of fanfic about him and sets out on a quest to beat up the author who mischaracterized him

mademoisellesansa:

rapacityinblue:

queerperegrintook:

emberkeelty:

aporeticelenchus:

heidi8:

sonneillonv:

dressthesavage:

narwhalsareunderwaterunicorns:

anglofile:

spicyshimmy:

how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?

like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’ 

was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’ 

sometimes i wonder

oh my GOD

the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print. 

here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.

however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around. 

but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh). 

conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr. 

(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.) 

I needed to know this.

See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.

Ancient Iliad fandom is intense

Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).

And then there’s this gem from Plato:

“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus - his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” - Symposium

That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.

More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do

Man I love this post.

And to add my personal favourite story: after reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa in the 18th century, Elizabeth Echlin decided that she was NOT HAPPY with the ending and basically wrote her own fix-it fic. No-one dies and Lovelace (the villain) was totally reformed and became a super nice guy. It’s completely OOC and incredibly poorly written and it’s beautiful. 

Also, so many women fell in love with the villain, Lovelace, and wrote to Richardson about it, that he kept adding new bits with each edition to highlight what a hideous person Lovelace was. So it’s almost unsurprising that reading novels in this period was actually considered dangerous because it gave women unrealistic ideas about men and made them easier prey for rakes. 

Basically, “I want my own Christian Grey” has been a thing for hundreds of years. 

Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.

Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.

Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.

According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone. 

In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of. 

(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)

Since music has become an almost general amusement, nothing is more useful than a shop that has assembled all kinds of music from ancient to modern. Such is on offer at the business we are announcing today that will be opened the 22nd of this month… The subscription will be 24 livres per year, in exchange for which sum the subscriber can take whatever piece of music that they would like.

The first music subscription service, 1765. “He was promptly sued.”

From the blog post 250 Years of Music Subscription Services.

(via bmichael)

Oh that reminds me, did anyone else see Princess of Thieves, the 2001 Disney TV movie with Kiera Knightley as Robin Hood’s daughter with her father in the Maid Marian role?

It was fucking TERRIBLE.

I got it off Netflix when Netflix still came in the mail because Kiera Knightley with a sword in tight leather, rawr. That was kind of a dry run for her roles in Pirates of the Caribbean, playing a girl who could

1) outfight the male lead and

2) act directly against their commands if she saw fit

Which was hot for the Red Sonja reason that holy shit, she could force herself on you.

Which is to say I totally wanted 2000s Kiera Knightley to rape me. Well I guess “ravish”, which is what it’s called when honestly you really want it. In the butt, with a leather strap-on, maybe. That appeals to me, which is really inconvenient when you’re a straight guy.

(Inb4 the obvious, I’ve got a huge cis fetish. In the original sense of “fetish”, as a necessary component of sexual satisfaction.)

((I remember being maybe 8 and discovering the showerhead massager up my butt feeling surprisingly satisfying, for some reason I mentally glossed this as having a large couch in my living room. When I first got into PiV sex I mentally glossed it as using a wooden crane to offload crates of tea from a sailing ship. DUDE I DON’T EVEN KNOW))

I’m so eyerolling dismissive about people’s youthful sexuality play because I’ve been through that shit a long time ago and come out the other side. I fancied myself Kinsey 3 for a while because…

oh wait this is hilarious. Because back in the ‘90s my first regular porn source was off USENET, I forget even why but alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.cartoons(.moderated?). Fuckin’ Milo Manara and Spunky Knight and XXXenophiles and old Tijuana bibles and damn professional-grade (which in retrospect was probably from a professional doing doujin-style sidework) Gen13 fanart with Rainmaker on Freefall while Fairchild schlicked, and this one guy who just loved to draw girls and horses.

And there was one picture I came across that was like, a dude eating a girl out while a guy sucked him off, only they were blue foxes and grey coyotes, and for some reason that made a big impression and stuck with me.

I, Kontextmaschine, spent my teenage years thinking of himself as someone who would TOTALLY suck dick, looking forward to it even, because of a single piece of 1990s bisexual furry porn, maybe 92k and took 3 minutes to download. Truefax.

Then I finally got a chance and it wasn’t repulsive or anything just not actively attractive and without that the sheer physicality of it was just ridiculous and unappealing. Like trying to give someone a massage with your mouth while they choke you. And the reverse did nothing for me, so it was like “welp, guess I’m straight”.

Also you know I identified as female for a lot of elementary school. The classmates (this would be 3rd grade so 199…1? didn’t taunt me that I couldn’t be a girl but rather that how would I afford SRS, because the last Transgender Moment was still in live memory, Renee Richards and Wendy Carlos and all.

Every generation thinks it invented sex, I guess now apparently gender too.

In retrospect I think a lot of it was that I wanted to escape male expectations and be protected and appreciated for my delicacy and vulnerability. Which I look around tumblr now and game recognize game. Game recognize game.

And grass is always greener and now I appreciate that my female classmates weren’t exactly in a utopia, and those who commit to transition God knows that’s not the comforting welcome they get.

But I did go to school once in like 9th grade wearing that first girlfriend’s dress. This teacher who came off as harsh and conservative just stopped me in the hall, looked me up and down, and just said “nah, that doesn’t flatter you”. Which was probably the best counter possible, I realized girl clothes weren’t just culturally encoded but physically draped from tits and hips and butt I didn’t have.

Still for years I would maintain a ~joke~ about ~actually~ being a lesbian because I had declared the space around me to be the Floating Island of Lesbos, and I still default to female avatars in games. Also there’s a few disposable camera pictures of me out there somewhere from my Renn Faire years in full corset, dress, and makeup.

There’s a reason I stayed with moneycat even through her bullshit “political lesbianism + universal MtF transition” year.

Eugene McCarthy was a candidate in the 1968 Democratic presidential primary who drew a lot of youth support by challenging an “inevitable” establishment candidate from a boldly left position.

The election of a relatively young and tbh naive Democratic “culture hero” candidate 8 years earlier had raised hopes and even though the party had racked up some significant accomplishments since then, expanding the welfare state and drawing energy from a grassroots civil rights movement, this had more radicalized than satisfied the young activist base and they were looking for a candidate offering a more full-throated leftism, particularly in rejecting war and entanglement with the business establishment.

When it became clear that party insiders were actively trying, with ultimate success, to nominate anyone else for (ultimately futile) reasons of “electability” and interest-group logrolling clientelism, this caused significant disillusionment and further radicalization.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, and their milieu learned the art of polemics during years spent in the CCNY cafeteria’s celebrated Alcove No. 1, where young Trotskyists waged ideological warfare against the Communist students who occupied Alcove No. 2. During their flirtations with Trotskyism in the 1930s, when tussles with other radical students seemed like a matter of life and death, future neoconservatives developed habits of mind that never atrophied.

“Freedom cannot exist outside some system of order, yet no system of order is immune from intellectual assault.”

In issuing an ominous warning that “the bonds of civility upon which the maintenance of society depends are more fragile than we often admit,” Wilson hinted that the United States manifested conditions precariously similar to those of Weimar Germany, a specious comparison that nonetheless became a neoconservative mantra.

cleophatracominatya:

“President Obama is keen to introduce tough new laws which will force the KKK and other extreme right-wing groups to disclose the identities of their members, Daily Mail Online can disclose.

The President discussed the possibility of the new measures when he telephoned Charleston mayor Joe Riley following last week’s massacre.

Riley, who is into his 40th year as mayor of the city where nine people were murdered by a self-proclaimed white supremacist down in the AME church massacre, said he and the President talked about how best to set up a national council to act as a watchdog to monitor and report on race hate.

Among the ideas being looked at is legislation forcing extreme right wings groups and violent organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan to provide identities of supporters and members”.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3140789/Obama-wants-KKK-forced-members-supporters-Charleston-church-massacre.html

It’s about FUCKING TIME…let’s see if this will actually pop off! Can you imagine how many CEO heads to police commissioners to deli owners will be brought to light! The KKK comes in many forms don’t be fooled.

Just saw an ad for this. Just imagine, adjustable rollerskates! That clamp over your shoes! With non-inline wheels! What will they think of next. Yours for only $120.

sibyl-of-space:

lardypoison:

do you think in the 1700s there were people who were like nah man Mozart’s a total sellout I only listen to peasants beating things with sticks it’s way more authentic

I know this is a joke post but as a music major I can actually answer this with a resounding YES THIS HAS LITERALLY ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE

When the violin was invented people were pissing on its tone for being too loud and it lacking the ‘authenticity’ of the viola da gamba. People (especially French people) reacted to new Italian technologies like the freaking violin like Vivaldi was part of a heavy metal band– which would have been awesome, by the way.

Also, in the romantic period, literally every single symphony ever had a “pastoral” section where the strings are supposed to sound like bagpipes to imitate the pure, rural peasant life and reject the upper class for being too materialistic.

The long and short of it is music listeners have always been assholes and humanity is exactly the same way it was in the 1600s. Hell, when the REALLLY early French composers first heard the interval of a third (brought over from England) they were like “WHAT IS THIS DEVILRY, THE ONLY PURE INTERVALS ARE THE FOURTH AND FIFTH.” That’s right. The interval “do”-“mi” was too new age shit for them to handle.

Music history is amazing

The ‘70s Transgender Moment was the apex of the Surgeons-as-Gods thing that came out of WWI (and then it was all downhill from there)

This one seems to derive from the Psychotherapists-as-Priests thing that came out of WWII.

Now the 2040s Cold War cybernetics one, that’s going to be interesting.

(1948 voice) I listen to everything but race music and hillbilly records.

Girolamo Savonarola (Italian: [savonaˈrɔːla]; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498) was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor.

…the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and, at the friar’s urging, established a “popular” republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world center of Christianity and “richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever”,[1] he instituted an extreme puritanical campaign, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth.

As idioms go, I preferred “in touch with his feminine side” to “nonbinary” tbqh

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class

kontextmaschine:

The Partisan Leader - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Partisan Leader; A Tale of The Future is a political novel by the antebellum Virginia author and jurist Nathaniel Beverley Tucker. A two-volume work published in 1836 in New York City and in 1837 in Washington, D.C. under the pen-name “Edward William Sydney,”^[1] the novel is set thirteen years into the future, in 1849, and imagines a world where the American states south of Virginia have seceded from the Union. The story traces the formation of a band of Virginia insurgents who seek to free their state from federal control and adjoin it to the independent Southern Confederacy.