abbyjean:

going to a prince concert:

• if you ever have the opportunity to go to one, you should go. cancel your plans, do whatever needs to be done, but be there.
• it doesn’t matter if you have good seats or the seats in the farthest reaches of the balcony. the only criteria for evaluating seats for a prince show is “are they in the same room where prince will be performing.” if the answer is yes, then they are good seats. prince will make sure everyone has a great time.
• if you are going to a prince concert, you can wear black, purple, or sequins. lace is also accepted, but only if it is black or purple.

being at a prince concert:

• prince will joke with you. when he takes off his jacket (squeee!), he will pretend that he is going to throw it into the crowd. prince is not going to throw his jacket into the crowd! that is an exquisitely tailored jacket that matches his exquisite cream colored pants and he is not going to throw it away.
• prince will recalibrate your sense of sexy. on paper, there is not that much that is sexy about a tiny man wearing gold sequin pants and a black sleeveless turtleneck tunic with armbands that spell out his own name, but during that part in “little red corvette” where he swings his ass around, you will be so overcome by hottness that you may need to fan yourself to prevent from swooning.
• when prince brings out chaka khan and they start doing a duet of “sweet thing” you may feel so overwhelmed and excited that you feel like you are going to die. don’t worry - this is a natural reaction to prince’s overwhelming princeocity. 
• at one point, prince will pretend to be flustered because he has run out of hits. think for a moment. could prince ever run out of hits? no! this is the introduction to the part where he plays a medley of some of the biggest pop hits of the last 30 years. prince is just playing with you.
• prince does have expectations for you as an audience. at times, he will command you to sing, like with the “ooh ooh ooh ooh” part near the end of purple rain. that will be fine because the music will already be irrepressibly coming out of your body and prince will just conduct it. if you sing as prince commands, he will reward you by doing a little dance. this is an excellent deal and one you should accept.
• if you clap along, prince would really prefer that you do it on the 2 and 4 beats.

overall prince review:

• i left sweaty and exhausted and beyond happy. i can’t remember the last time i smiled that much.

this is so 100% accurate that i had to log into my personal tumblr for the first time in over a month to reblog it. i saw prince in march and it was MAGICAL.

(it was also surprisingly inexpensive - $30 after charges is the least i’ve ever paid to see a big star).

I hate to write this, because I love Andy…But I do not love the way that he treats Ann and her new boyfriend Mark after she dumps him, nor do I love the way that the show frames his actions as cute, affectionate, and distinctly nonthreatening. Andy’s continued harassment and monitoring of Ann is not violent, but a big man following someone around and refusing to leave a former partner in peace carries the baggage of domestic violence; just because Andy is a “nice guy” does not mean that he cannot be violent. This refusal to take Andy’s creepy and unwanted attention as a seriously flawed pattern of entitled behavior that goes beyond his goofy personality reflects a cultural desire to re-frame a scary and dangerous pattern of behavior disproportionately targeted at women as an affectionate and romantic way of showing concern.

[Photo: A picture of a waterfall in New Zealand Australia. There is a peek of the sky at the top, and different forms of green plant - moss and leaves, and to the left of the screen, a bush. In the middle of the screen is a stream of water pouring onto the wet rocks mostly located at the bottom-slight right side of the screen. From Wikipedia]

great with meeting/making/trusting/maintaining friends in meatspace

TERRIBLE at it on the internet. i have very little sense of “netiquette”. even though that’s where i spend WAY more time.

-sitara:

quixotess:

ardhra:

fourloves:

Speaking out against her peers’ devaluation of house-elves is a brave move befitting the best parts of Hermione’s character…But in forming SPEW, she uses her oppression as license to act as an authority, as a leader for folks who experience oppression she did not. This is a grave mistake common to people of privilege in social justice movements: she centers and prioritizes her skewed and unsuitable vision of what house-elf protection means over the concerns of house-elves.

amazing

Yeah, but also… this is a problem of the writing. Rowling wrote the Elves as passive and having internalised their enslavement to the point where they could never actually think outside it (even Dobby feels the taboos around criticising Wizards). When they finally do rebel against Wizards, its in the aid of other Wizards. Rather than Rowling getting into the wherefores of this, it’s made into a running joke at the expense of both Hermione and Elves, reinforcing the worldview of the most privileged male characters. In the end, Harry and Ron’s views about Elves are supported by the narrative, while Hermione’s is denied and the Elves’ completely ignored.

nodnod agreed that it’s suspect (“rigged,” I would say) the degree to which the elves did not care for freedom.

oh that part ALWAYS annoyed me SO much because it was just too damn reminiscent of the whole white liberal “but they LIKE working in sweatshops” bullshit. while i liked HP enough to read through them all as escapism i think that plotline was actually one of the major reasons i could never really get into it as much as other folks. threw me off too much/ made me too upset.

Writer of the piece dropping in to say that I absolutely agree that that’s a HUGE problem with the series - one I don’t have a great grasp of, which is why I haven’t written about it in great depth yet. It also extends to the way centaurs, giants, and goblins are written IMO. I acknowledge the problem in the text linked above, but not in as much depth as I think the issue deserves. 

fourloves:

transcript here: http://adeepercountry.blogspot.com/2011/03/disability-services-are-not-accessible.html

rjriotnrrd:

ANYWAY this is usually the point where I go to bed and try again in the morning

[Image is a triptych,* three photoshop panels featuring a concerned Wren from Riot Nrrd in purple outline looking to the right from the left side of the frame. In the top she is surrounded by stars squigglies and “OH NO”. Second has a cloud with Nih’s happy face looking left with BUH beneath. Third has Nhi again, pointing at a device of some sort (vibrator maybe?) with It’s the Fuken SHITT** beneath.]

GPO my writing process half the time.

*satah might have taught me this word. the wonder of transcripts!

**woot octopus pie

psychotropicpolitics:

I blame it all on you. I blame you for my lack of interest in book-learnin’ and my schoolwork. And my inability to sleep for more than 7 hours at a time. I hate you. “My So-Called Life” is new on InstantWatch? OF COURSE. GREAT. Now I will get nothing done before dinner tonight. Are you happy, Netflix? Is this what you wanted? INTERVENTION NEEDED. You’re no good for me.

Love,
Sarah Fitz

PS, I love you so much please don’t leave me

I blame Netflix for each one of the dishes in my sink. 

Also the fact that I haven’t taken a shower today.

Hermione’s exercise of oppression is not immediately apparent; she herself is the most major character who experiences the focal point of oppression in the books: she is Muggle-born, and is in constant danger because of her birth. She is also a woman, and though sexism seems to be a less-than-significant problem in the magic world, as a girl raised partially in the Muggle world she is acutely aware of sexism, and she frequently counters Ron and Harry’s sexism. But she confuses the authority with which she speaks on these experiences with authority on all oppression, and uses that confidence to silence and threaten house-elves through SPEW and her unwanted hats. Like many of us who experience and fight both sides of inequality, she uses her privilege to enforce another form of the system of oppresson that implicates us all, kyriarchy.

Thanks to winged, oh-little-owl, and eateroftrees for their help beta reading!