pictishdolphinbookworm22

Latest Posts by pictishdolphinbookworm22

Not a pro, but what else can I say? I HAD TO DRAW THIS AMAZING TRIO

I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

MEN WITH BIG NOSES

YOU AGREE. REBLOG.

I actually fucking adore you for cranachan being there. I live in France and at Uni we have a lot of international dinners and since I’m veggie and have no oven whatsoever (rather shit) cranachan is always my beloved in this situation. It’s funny how many people can’t do the ch sound right either, it’s fabulous sharing cracking food from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 especially cause everyone thinks its unremittingly abysmal. Also had not a clue about the chicken tikka masala legend Ali Ahmed Aslam who’s from my own city and this post prompted some reminisces about the phenomenal curries that we have been honoured to witness and found out that my da loves the Shish Mahal and frequented it a fair bit in the old days though his preferred method of self-immolation was a chicken bhuna. Thanks for this post, much cherished though I have a wretched yearning for a good scone, not really an option in Normandie lol.

What’s your group chat called

BABYYYYYY JUST UNMUTE GOD

reblog if ur mom is smart and beautiful

Obviously, I hope that everyone in Ukraine stays safe and Ukrainians deserve all of our support right now but I also wanted to say that my heart goes out to all people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia who have been living with the fear of Russian intervention for years and now see their worst fears come true. I see so many posts about how "we shouldn't worry as Westerners because the war will not affect us directly" and while this is absolutely true, I wanted to take a second to acknowledge those who do have to live with the fear that it might affect them directly. I don't have anything more to offer than words and it's not worth much but if you are from Poland, Estonia, Kazakhstan or any other country close to Russia or Ukraine and you are afraid because you don't know what the current events means for the future of your country, I am with you in thought and sending you a warm hug with this post.

anyway here’s your reminder that lgbt muslims exist and islamophobia shouldnt be tolerated within lgbt communities!

shout out to lgbt muslims living in places where our identities are still criminalised. 

Reblog if you think it’s okay to platonically say “I Love You” to your friends

Your cane is beautiful

Your wheelchair is impeccable

Your walker is good

Your prosthetic is divine

Your hearing aid is bewitching

Your scooter is striking

No cap, people with anxiety are literally so brave. Everytime you talk to someone, you show bravery. Everytime you work yourself through a panic attack, you show bravery. Anytime you do something that makes you anxious, and you get through it, you are showing how brave you are. Even if you don’t get through it, you did so good by trying. You are amazing, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

The Anti-Che - Jay Nordlinger

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

🌈🌈 some ancient lesbian ladies (lesbian, as from the island of lesbos. also lesbian as in gay)

♥ ♥ ♥ 

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Irene has the right idea, mint choc chip is supreme!

My current ice cream headcannons?

Kai: rum and raison

Irene: mint choc chip

Vale: coffee

Li Ming: Lemon

Ao Shun: licorice

Silver: vanilla

Catherine: white chocolate

Back at it for 2021! Re-blog if you love Orcas 🐋

bisexuals will see someone in period clothes and be like yes

Ya'll be like "Shang was having a bi freak out, realizing he was into Ping". NO HE WASN'T. He already knew he was into men. His bisexual freak out was when he realized Ping was Mulan and hey maybe he's into girls too whatdoya know?

Some warm poetry, for cold evenings:

Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” (We can make do with so little / just the hint of warmth, the slanted light.)

Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” (It is a kind of love, is it not? / how the cup holds the tea.)

Barbara Ras, “Bite Every Sorrow” (You can speak a foreign language, sometimes / and it can mean something.)

Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” (Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.)

Lisel Mueller, “Things” (Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image; / we gave the country a heart, / the storm an eye)

Rabindranath Tagore, “On the Seashore” (The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach / On the seashore of endless worlds children meet)

John O’Donohue, “Matins” (May I live this day / Compassionate of heart / Gentle in word / Courageous in thought)

Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm” (The summer night is like a perfection of thought. / The house was quiet because it had to be)

Brian Patten, “Inessential Things” (Cats remember what is essential of days)

Emily Dickinson, “Simplicity” (How happy is the little stone / that rambles in the road, alone)

Yi Lu, “Valley’s Green” (flowers like tiny saucers — little bowls — little cups / filled to the brim with their own colors)

Jacques Prévert, “How to Paint a Bird’s Portrait” (When the bird comes / if it comes / observe the most profound silence)

Archibald MacLeish, “Eleven” (Happy as though he had no name, as though
 / He had been no one: like a leaf, a stem,
 / Like a root growing…)

Denise Levertov, “A Woman Alone” (Then / self-pity dries up, a joy / untainted by guilt lifts her. / She has fears, but not about loneliness)

Richard Brautigan, “Your Catfish Friend” (I’d love you and be your catfish / friend and drive such lonely / thoughts from your mind)

Linda Gregg, “The Letter” (I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
 / good care of myself)

Andrew Lang, “Ballade of True Wisdom” (And I’d leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, / For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers)

Ada Limón, “The Raincoat” (my whole life I’ve been under her / raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel / that I never got wet.)

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Just” (These people, unaware, are saving the world)

Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” (I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.)

Happy Brithday, hope you’ve had an awesome day!!!

Yes I'm 23

i tried to explain what generational trauma is to someone recently and they were like “oh so because something happened historically, you get to have issues about it now?” and no.... that’s not what that is.

when i was in 8th grade, on my class trip to washington dc, we visited the holocaust museum. it’s a wonderful, extensive, informative place, and it’s a beautiful tribute to the victims. as a jewish kid, i knew what the holocaust was. i’d faced antisemetism every day of my life, and will continue to do so. i knew what had happened to my ancestors not too long ago.

but when i stood in that museum. in the recreation of the cattle trains used to move us to the camps. in the recreation of an auschwitz cabin, staring at the map of the camp. when i saw the pile of shoes and jewelry taken from the victims. when i learned how their hair, so very much like mine, was cut for having texture. and how their teeth were pulled for the gold fillings. i had a panic attack.

it was embarrassing, but i was a shitty little 8th grader, and i tried to hide it. but I couldn’t breathe. it was like there was a band around my chest the entire time i was in the museum. i was surrounded by ghosts, by the whispers of emaciated men and trapped women and crying children.

what is generational trauma?

it’s the psychological idea that trauma can be passed down through multiple different ways. trauma can change you significantly, even rewrite neural pathways and physically change how you think. that, paired with the cycle of subconsciously sharing our trauma with our children, as well as mixing with the trauma we learn as we grow, leads to some really rough patches in our relationships with our identites.

this is a really great 4 minute video from the healing foundation about the trauma carried by aboriginal people in Australia. tw for some really heavy topics, but all presented in a relaxed and serious environment.

what do we do?

well, honestly, i don’t know. it’s not like we’re gonna stop sharing our stories with our descendants, nor our histories. we can’t get rid of things related to our identities that give us our own trauma, the bigotry we face unfortunately isn’t going anywhere.

but being aware of your generational trauma is a good step. it’s not just being “sad” or “sensitive” to history. it’s our history still affecting us today. when your indigenous friends are made upset by discussions of colonization, when your black friends feel the weight of a millenia of racism placed on their shoulders, when your gay friends ask you to please stop using that word, when your trans friends see another historical figure deadnamed and misgendered, when your jewish friends can’t talk about the Shoah without their voices breaking.

so why the fuck are you lecturing us?

our murdered ancestors live on in us, in our eyes, our hearts. we are reminded of them constantly, made painfully aware of who we are and how many people hate us.

we were not supposed to survive, and if most of the world had their way, we wouldn’t have. (no, the allies were not heroes of wwii, you turned us away at your borders and continue to let us die from nazis today. if america had had the option, they wouldn’t have given a shit about jewish victims, but that’s a whole other essay i could write)

it’s time to start acknowledging the past, acknowledging your generational trauma and the trauma of those around you. i’m not making up an excuse to “have issues”. at the time i’m writing this, october 2020, i’m 17. i have felt this weight my entire life, and i will continue to shoulder it, as will everyone else.

my point is, maybe we can shoulder that weight together. maybe then it won’t weigh us down as badly. we have solidarity, and we are tough, and resilient, and strong, and beautiful. your generational trauma is something to be aware of, but not ashamed of. we can do this—change the world for the better. we can break the cycle so our descendants don’t feel as we do.

I don’t understand how the hell you write so well, this is phenomenal!!! Will and Daegal’s relationship is so wonderful, especially Will helping Daegal through things he has been through- the empathy and sharing- my goddddd. All the little details like Gwaine’s dice gift really knit this together and make it feel so real. Merlin being the complete and utter mum friend was hilarious and very in character. This just made me laugh so much and really made me feel joyful after a stressful day. Thank you for sharing this with us, I adored reading this. I can’t wait for more, (I would love to have more Mordred and Daegal interactions, that tension is interesting) and you’re one of my absolute favourite fic writers.

the edge of seventeen [fic]

summary: Daegal forgets his own birthday.  Merlin has a conniption.  Daegal has a crisis.

context for newcomers: This is the next installment in an ongoing AU that @once-and-future-gay​ and I have been playing around with, wherein both Will and Daegal survived into Season 5.  The background for that AU can be found here, and the associated fics (plus one art post) are at the following links: be good / persistence / tournaments / daegal post-carpentry (art).

a/n: @once-and-future-gay​​, this was actually written for your birthday XD  I started it that Tuesday intending for it to be a very short snippet that I could post the same day, but I quickly realized that it was turning into a bigger piece, and now, a week and a half later, it’s a 10k story.  I apologize for how belated it is, but I hope you’ll accept it as a birthday gift anyhow - I figured that if it were up to me, I’d rather have ‘more fic’ than ‘on-time fic,’ so - happy (belated) birthday to you, and here’s some more of this AU for you, featuring Daegal and a wide supporting cast! ✨

Keep reading

Oh my god they’re so cute! Yeah, it must be difficult to get the word out especially since the craft fairs and everything aren’t operating. I wish you luck.

Oh look, back at it again with giving an OC my own issues because therapy is expensive 

That sounds incredible also super difficult to explain to parents. Queer vampires as my absolute fave!

My dad asked what I was writing for nanowrimo. How does one explain that it's about three vampires in a trench coat starting a cult and then getting pissy when people find out and also found family, everyone's queer and some other weird shit along the way?

I would really recommend Perfectly Preventable Deaths by Deirdre Sullivan. It’s set in small town Ireland and the atmosphere super close and secretive. They live in a castle with secret passages- awesome! It’s hilarious and I love the characters and it’s a fast paced read as well, I tore through it.

do u know of any wlw witch story lines?? ty!!

There is a Goodreads list for Sapphic Witch Books! Personally, I can recommend

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue (Fairytales)

Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas, #1) by Zoraida Córdova (Bruja bisexual main character)

The Witch Sea by Sarah Diemer (Another fairytale-ish story)

I haven’t read Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle yet, but I’ve heard really good things about it!

I’m also excited to read Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe, which I’ve been told includes some F/F stories.

The Lost Coast by Amy Rose Capetta doesn’t come out until the Spring of 2019, and all I know about it is that the blurb promises queer witches in the woods, but that’s enough for me.

Also check out this Autostraddle post: Read These 10 Books with Queer Witches