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17th century tiles from Museum Rotterdam.

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Wunmi Mosaku Photographed by Mahaneela for Schön! Magazine (June 2021)

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"degenerate" "gooner" "perv" shut up. shut the fuck up. listen to yourself. you sound ridiculous. human sexuality is HEALTHY and NORMAL. don't get caught up in this wave of puritanistic ideals that try to convince you your sexuality is immoral and unhealthy.

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The novel is called Pride & Prejudice.

If you make Darcy in a Sad Little Socially Anxious Shyboi who never did anything wrong in his whole life and has TRAUMA from Georgiana's near elopement, then you remove his snobbish Pride and erase his classiest Prejudice and it's no longer the novel Jane Austen wrote.

If you focus only on how men need to fix themselves and forget that Elizabeth judged too quickly and harshly; if you erase her need to grow, you remove her Pride in her intelligence/judgment and her Prejudice in maintaining her First Impressions (original title) and it's no longer the novel that Jane Austen wrote.

The story is beautiful because two people are open-minded enough to learn, reflect, and grow. The love story is compelling because neither of them are perfect. If you disrupt the balance of their faults, the entire premise falls apart.

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Claude Monet's House and Gardens by whatstacydid.

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from the archives of octavia butler

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some dykes for your feed :) going to be making pints of this later this year >:)

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dni unless you have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, all while possessing a certain something in your air and manner of walking, the tone of your voice, your address and expressions-

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Flower Cakes

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One day at the end of May sunlight burst through the mist in the little woods near my house as a thrush was singing.

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ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

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“Darling, darling. I live in you, and you would die for me. I love you so.”

carmilla (stone) lithograph | prints here

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Darcy’s introduction in Pride and Prejudice is really ‘what if you had just had the worst month of your life because your ex-bestie tried to lover boy scam your baby sister out of her share of your dad’s life insurance and your friend dragged you to a shitty party in a dive bar in the neighbourhood where he’d just signed a short term lease, and you decided to let your bad mood show because you were never going to see any of the assholes in this stupid shitty bar EVER again. And your friend ended up making out with a girl he’d just met there while you were stuck talking to her sister who was less cute and then her mother appeared and started trying to matchmake and started saying how if she was twenty years younger she’d clime you like a redwood and ooooh is that a black Amex, guess the next round is on you hahhahahahaha, while her other sister (how many fucking sisters does she have?!) flashed an obviously fake ID at the bar and ordered six vodka-diet red bulls and no one in her family except the less-cute sister even tried to stop her. And you went home and consoled yourself that you would never see any of these people again but then you met them over and over again because they live next door and your friend and the cute sister keep meeting up to make out but not actually date and then. You fall in love with the less-cute sister because it turns out she’s really witty and charismatic but she already knows and remembers and resents the fact that on a day when you were in a shitty mood you called her mid out loud in a dive bar.’

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A book made by Eliza Telfer in 1868.

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This image was captured last weekend at Malin Head, County Donegal, during Storm Éowyn.

Pic. Michael Mc Daid S Photography

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by Noma Osula