Physically I'm In My Student's Apartment, Mentally I'm Here.

Keira Knightley in her period dramas is everything I aspire to be and more. 🙏

Keira Knightley on the set of Pride & Prejudice 2005

How is it that I can be interested only in men and don't even think about girls that much, but then I see one (1) picture of a lady pirate and suddenly I am like: Women, women ❤️ WOMEN 👸 wOmEn, ✨women 😍 women 🥰. So pretty. Men who?

Like... what am I? Am I making this up? Am I faking it... whatever the "it" means? Am I straight? Am I bi? Do I just really like pirates? Is that it? Do I have a thing for pirate costumes? I need answers.

Hopefully this will lift the heavy weight off someone's chest today.

reading vincent van goghs letters and he keeps repeating the same thing.. that i may be of use in the world. he repeats it over and over, in questions, in musings, in desperation. how can i be of use in the world? (the most precious question!) how can i be of use in the world? (how can anyone?) reminds me of that mary oliver quote: to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. if i were any more insightful i could say something profound here, but i think if we keep focused attention on the question, we may find a way to be of some good. like rilke meant. by loving the questions themselves, we may one day stumble upon the answer.

Don't mind me, for the last couple of days I'm in the state of dreaming about Pride&prejudice and unreal slow-burn romances. Yay.

Pride & Prejudice (2005), dir. Joe Wright “Dreaming” (1928), by Maxfield Parrish

My Biggest and Most Annoying Fictional Horse Pet Peeve

Big Horses are a Very New Thing and they Likely Didn’t Exist in your Historical and/or Fantasy Settings.

You’ve all seen it in every historical piece of media ever produced. Contrary to popular belief, a big black horse with long legs and long flowing mane is not a widespread or even a particularly old type of horse.

THIS IS NOT A MEDIEVAL THING. THIS IS NOT EVEN A BAROQUE THING. THIS IS A NINETEENTH CENTURY CITY CARRIAGE HORSE.

All the love to fancy Friesian horses, but your Roman general or Medieval country heroine just really couldn’t, wouldn’t, and for the sake of my mental health shouldn’t have ridden one either.

Big warmblood horses are a Western European and British invention that started popping up somewhere around 1700s when agriculture and warfare changed, and when rich folks wanted Bigger Faster Stronger Thinner race horses. The modern warmblood and the big continental draught both had their first real rise to fame in the 1800s when people started driving Fancy Carriages everywhere, and having the Fanciest Carriage started to mean having the Tallest and Thinnest Horses in the town.

Before mechanised weaponry and heavy artillery all horses used to be small and hardy easy-feeders. Kinda like a donkey but easier to steer and with a back that’s not as nasty and straight to sit on.

SOME REAL MEDIEVAL, ROMAN, OTTOMAN, MONGOL, VIKING, GREEK and WHATEVER HISTORICALLY PLAUSIBLE HORSES FOR YOU:

“Primitive”, native breeds all over the globe tend to be only roughly 120-140 cm (12.0 - 13.3 hh) tall at the withers. They all also look a little something like this:

Mongolian native horse (Around 120-130 at the withers, and decendants of the first ever domesticated horses from central Asia. Still virtually unchanged from Chinggis Khan’s cavalry, ancestor to many Chinese, Japanese and Indian horses, and bred for speed racing and surviving outdoors without the help of humans.)

Carpathian native horse / Romanian and Polish Hucul Pony (Around 120-150 at the withers, first mentioned in writing during the 400s as wild mountain ponies, depicted before that in Trajanian Roman sculptures, used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in the 19th century)

Middle-Eastern native horse / Caspian Pony (Around 100-130 at the withers, ancestor of the Iranian Asil horse and its decendants, including the famous Arabian and Barb horses, likely been around since Darius I the Great, 5th century BC, and old Persian kings are often depicted riding these midgets)

Baltic Sea native horse / Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Gotland and Nordland horses (Around 120-150 at the withers, descendant of Mongolian horses, used by viking traders in 700-900 AD and taken to Iceland. Later used by the Swedish cavalry in the 30 years war and by the Finnish army in the Second World War, nowadays harness racing and draught horses)

Siberian native horse / Yakutian pony (Around 120-140 at the withers, related to Baltic and Mongolian horses and at least as old, as well-adapted to Siberian climate as woolly mammoths once were, the hairiest horse there is, used in draught work and herding)

Mediterranean native horse / Skyros pony, Sardinian Giara, Monterufolino (Around 100-140 at the Withers, used and bred by ancient Greeks for cavalry use, influenced by African and Eastern breeds, further had its own influence on Celtic breeds via Roman Empire, still used by park ranger officers in Italy)

British Isles’ native horse / various “Mountain & Moorland” pony breeds (Around 100-150 at the withers, brought over and mixed by Celts, Romans and Vikings, base for almost every modern sport pony and the deserving main pony of all your British Medieval settings. Some populations still live as feral herds in the British countryside, used as war mounts, draught horses, mine pit ponies, hunting help and race horses)

So hey, now you know!

Golden Dust ✨ gifs made by me :)

I love this.

look i know we’ve discussed every which way the sorting system is bullshit but also??? people’s values??? change??? as they get older???

give me a hufflepuff who was never taught to advocate for themselves as a kid, who was taught that their worth came from being selfless and sacrificial and making others happy, so they value loyalty and hard work and all of those amazing hufflepuff traits, but through this warped lens because they don’t have a solid foundation of self-esteem or any sense of boundaries. give me that kid getting sorted and being the huffliest puff there ever was, but who is literally driving themselves into the ground trying to help others and has quickly become the castle’s number one choice when someone needs a favor. and they think it’s good! they think they’re living up to their house and those expectations because they don’t have any other foundation for affection and love besides being praised for being useful. 

give me that kid barely scraping by and getting sick from staying up so late and having no legitimate friendships because the people they interact with just want favors all the time. give me that kid getting yanked into an empty classroom by a seventh year slytherin and her hufflepuff girlfriend (they’re in love shut up) and having a real uncomfortable conversation about where/how the kid gets validation and hey, are you happy? are you healthy? are you taking care of yourself? is anyone taking care of you?

and because the answer is obviously no, give me that kid suddenly having two seventh-year moms, one of which is a terrifying slytherin who will hex anyone who comes close asking for a favor, and whose pep talks basically boil down to aren’t you tired of being nice? don’t you just wanna go ape shit?

give me six months of that kid realizing that their self worth isn’t tied to what they can provide to people and that they love their house but honestly? they have their own shit to deal with. they have goals and ambitions and dreams and nearly failing out of school because they’re trying to help everyone else is not the way to live life. i want that kid to wake up in the slytherin dorms one morning, completely bedecked in green and silver, and their slytherin mom being smug about it for fucking weeks because, i called it babe, you know i did

because people’s values change! getting older shifts your perspectives and what you value and there are so many ways that kids with shitty home lives or even just one with bad self-esteem could end up in one house and feel like a fraud when their morals and values adapt to growing up. because everyone changes as they grow up oh my god 

tl;dr @ jk rowling your binary sorting system sucks let kids change what they believe in and represent it in canon you coward 

Not to be controversial or anything, but if you identify yourself with dark academia but you don’t uses the lessons of past, in novels and general history, to reflect and better the present, the only academic you are is of ignorance.

The point of studying text and art and history is not to just appreciate it but to understand, analysis and apply it, as a means to shape a better present and future.

For example if you love blood brother but only analysis it in the context of class relations of the time it was wrote, and not also as a way to show how little we have changed dispute as a culture knowing that our system was wrong, you are not a academic. You are a fan.

There is nothing wrong with that but despite what Wilde says art has use beyond enjoyment, beyond the singular, it reflects the history of a society and it’s emotions. It reflects how we got here and reminds us that as we changed once we can change again, through action.

So if in this lockdown you have turned away from social media in favour of books and art, the next time you read othello or to kill a mockingbird remember that is not a past we have moved on from. George flyod lived and breathed as we did. But now he is dead, and there is something you can do to prevent that same fate of innocent black people.

Stand up, step up and fight together ✊🏾

no act of kindness is small and insignificant!!! if you choose to be kind and do good your choice matters and makes the world a better place. never underestimate a kind heart 

Finding love as a transgender person

Marianne Oakes has shared an amazing collection of transgender love stories over at GenderGP. 

Here are a few of them. 

Marianne wrote:

The myth that trans people struggle to find love is damaging to our future generations, if trans youth or worse still, their parents believe this, then the impact can be loss of hope. My experience is pretty much like all the lovely comments here, let’s stop the myth, xx

More here!