“It Is Only In The Body Of A Person Whom We Have Loved Deeply For A Long Time That We Don’t Perceive

Psst, hey, Marilyn Monroe’s image as a freewheeling sexpot was a carefully constructed lie. The real Marilyn Monroe was a roiling tragedy and her life was an indictment of our society as a whole. She was orphaned after her mother had a schizophrenic breakdown, bounced around between foster homes where she was sexually abused, and married a 21-year-old at 16 to get out of being sent to an orphanage. Hugh Hefner published nude photos of her without her consent that were taken when she was 23 and desperate. She suffered severe anxiety and depression, which she coped with by drinking and using barbiturates, and was already a full-blown addict when she became famous in the mid-50s. Her career was one of exploitation, condescension and alienation, and she killed herself at 36. That Hugh Hefner, a man who was at best an unpleasant footnote in her life, felt entitled to be buried next to her is one more humiliation in a pop cultural landscape we should all be ashamed of.

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!

“At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.”

— The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

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.

My final thesis is finally coming together. It's raining here a lot and I feel in peace with my deadline... at least for this moment.

south asian fitzwilliam darcy moodboard

"I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever."

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Reblog, please. People need to know about this!

turkey and azerbaijan are attacking armenia right now, and it's 1915 all over again because the world is distracted and people are too busy wondering if they're gonna live or die, and who gives a shit about my country anyway? my mum told me to tell my friends and explain to them what's happening and that we are the victims in this war because azerbaijan is spreading lies and people are believing their lies and i told her, what good is that going to do? do you think anyone's going to come to our aid? is russia going to help us? is america? is england? erdogan said they will finish what their ancestors started, and he means genocide. he means ethnic cleansing. he means to massacre every last one of us. and in doing so admitted to the very same thing turkey has spent 105 years denying. i don't know who to tell and what good telling people will do because we're a small, insignificant country, and we have nothing to offer to the people in power, the handful who rule the world. so i sit here with my pain and i feel helpless. i know there's twitter threads and links to petitions and people being urged to contact their senators, and sorry if im being pessimistic, but azerbaijan has been attacking us for the last 22 years, and though we defend ourselves, we can't do anything to stop them. they've violated ceasefires (and geneva conventions) multiple times. i don't think they'll rest until every last one of us is dead.

we just want peace. we just want to live peacefully. we're not asking for a lot here.

actually i love growing older and learning how i work as a person like realizing what kinds of fabrics feel best on my skin or what brand of yogurt i like best or how I want to be touched. watching myself change, enjoying brussel sprouts when I used to hate them as a child, understanding why I got angry in that one conversation 10 years ago… there are so many mysteries inside me that i have yet to unravel and there will always be more and sometimes i think maybe its all worth it

This energy is something that I want to cultivate in myself. I also deeply wish my future spouse is going to be like that.

I want them to be able to sit with our kid and do a math homework with them withou yelling and making them cry. Just calm, kind and patient people. I love them. They're the best.

that video of the guy trying to get his baby to drink orange juice and the baby spilling it all over and the man catching the juice box and inhaling and forcing himself to calm down and without raising his voice murmurs "I didn't foresee that, that was my fault" and his baby mindlessly keeps going without realizing it made a mess because his dad or uncle or whatever was so calm about it lives rent free in my head