Tag: words

shakespearean-spunk:

“you make my heart beat in iambic pentameter.”

no you don’t understand shakespeare literally writes to the beat of your heart

  • that’s why shakespearean actors will sometimes pound their chests in time to the words during readings
  • that’s why you use fluctuations in the rhythm to track your character’s emotional state – any irregularities in the scansion are like the character’s heart stuttering or jumping or skipping a beat
  • that’s why when characters share the rhythm – switching off in the middle of a foot – those characters inevitably have an extraordinarily intimate connection

shakespeare fucking writes viscerally, he is literally in your body, and that, my friend, that is why the best shakespearean actors don’t posture and emote

you have to be fucking alive and passionate and electric – it can’t be intellectual, in the end, it has to be about connection and the sweating, cheering, jeering, bleeding masses you’re performing to, because make no mistake, shakespeare may go to lofty heights, but he only works if you’re just as grounded in the earth. he has to be in your body. he has to be in your body.

holy motherfucking shit i love shakespeare so much, get him in your bones, breathe him in, stomp and rage and pine, dadum dadum dadum dadum dadum, it is literally to the beat of your heart

Consider this: You can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photo-receptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it.

NASA Lunar Science Institute, 2012

(via laughing-treeees)

finnblush:

Not that he necessarily even remembers the 1940s, but it was different. Now people act differently, they use technology, and I think just for him, regular everyday tasks like going to the supermarket to get food, watching movies, going to the museum—all that stuff, I think, are things he’s probably doing on his own.

Rather than fighting for every woman’s right to feel beautiful, I would like to see the return of a kind of feminism that tells women and girls everywhere that maybe it’s all right not to be pretty and perfectly well behaved. That maybe women who are plain, or large, or old, or differently abled, or who simply don’t give a damn what they look like because they’re too busy saving the world or rearranging their sock drawer, have as much right to take up space as anyone else.

I think if we want to take care of the next generation of girls we should reassure them that power, strength and character are more important than beauty and always will be, and that even if they aren’t thin and pretty, they are still worthy of respect. That feeling is the birthright of men everywhere. It’s about time we claimed it for ourselves.

loveisadirtywordblog:

Laurie Penny, “I don’t want to be told I’m pretty as I am – I want to live in a world where that’s irrelevant”, New Statesman, 11th of May 2013

(via internal-acceptance-movement)

captainbisexualcherry:

honestly the thing I have the hardest time suspending my disbelief for in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that Steve and Bucky are not fucking.

 A guy shrinks down to the size of an ant and can communicate with them? Totally believable. Literal other world god that is thousands of years old and travels via rainbow? No problem. Dude manages to stay alive by performing what is basically open heart surgery on himself while being held in captivity in some actual hell hole, and somehow doesn’t die? Sure!

Bucky breaks through 70 years of brainwashing and disobeys a direct order from the man that has tortured him for god knows how long, because his ‘best friend’ recites a line that is basically a marriage vow, and i’m supposed to believe those two aren’t head over heels for each other? Yeah right. 

1800tryme:

raptorific:

Seriously, it surprises me that people still don’t get that “whitewashing” doesn’t just mean “taking a character of color and turning them white,” but also applies to “focusing disproportionately on the stories of white people,” “glossing over or altering parts of a story to make it more palatable or make white people look better,” and “treating ‘white’ as the default race”

The fact that Disney churns out film after film after film after film about white people with a maximum of one film per ethnicity that showcases a group other than white people is whitewashing.

The fact that the story of “Pocahontas” (not her real name) has been substantially altered so that some of the white people in that story don’t look like such villains, with John Smith younger and Pocahontas significantly older, as well as recounting a popular myth of her saving John Smith from near-execution (a story John Smith made up to make himself look brave, the real Pocahontas told him to stop telling and hated him for using her to make himself look good, and he started to spread like wildfire after she died because she could no longer object) is whitewashing.

The fact that the characters on “How I Met Your Mother” are all white, and they supposedly live in New York City, but apparently associate exclusively with other white people (with the exception of Wayne Brady, who occasionally visits from out of town, and a recurring taxi driver) is whitewashing.

The fact that the Doctor has now been a white man a full twelve times in a row is whitewashing even though the character’s always been white, because the idea that there’s a character whose entire appearance can change in a matter of seconds, yet ends up white twelve times in a row by pure random chance, implies that white is a neutral default and other races are a deviation from that norm. 

The fact that people get really angry at the suggestion that characters like Newt Scamander or Hermione Granger could be black because the books never explicitly say “they are black” is whitewashing.

Because that’s the thing. People often assume that when someone’s race isn’t explicitly specified, they’re white. People insist that Katniss Everdeen must be white because it is possible for them to rationalize that idea in their head. People think of white as “raceless” and every other color or ethnicity as “raced,” and that’s what we call “eurocentrism.“ 

And that’s the thing about whitewashing. It’s this idea that a “person” is white, and a “person of color” is black or asian or arab or latin@ or whatever they might be.

It’s why people call John Stewart the “Black Green Lantern” but just call Hal Jordan the “Green Lantern.” It’s why Miles Morales is called “Black Spider-man” but Peter Parker is just “Spider-man.” If you want to throw gender into the mix, it’s why Jennifer Walters is the “She-Hulk” but Bruce Banner isn’t the “He-Hulk.”

People think “character” is white and “character + black” is black. There is no default race. Community did a whole episode about how a truly raceless character would look something like this monstrosity:

But there’s the tricky part: Once you stop thinking of white characters as “character” and start thinking of them as “character + white,” it becomes really overwhelming how many characters are white. 

I mean, I know there’s a kerfuffle over Disney Princesses right now, so let’s look at the list of official Disney Princesses, shall we? That is, let’s look at the list and include everyone’s race, not just the princesses of color:

  • Snow White + White
  • Cinderella + White
  • Aurora + White
  • Ariel + White
  • Belle + White
  • Jasmine + Arab
  • Pocahontas + Native American
  • Mulan + Asian
  • Tiana + Black
  • Rapunzel + White
  • Merida + White
    Soon to be added:
  • Anna + White
  • Elsa + White

4 of those 13 women are women of color. All four of those women of color are different races than one another. At the moment, the number of white princesses is seven, but it’s about to go up to nine. All nine of those princesses are the same race as one another, despite a few of them being different nationalities, although most of them hail from Western Europe.

And a lot of people are saying “but they’re just accurately portraying the parts of the world those stories are set in!” First of all, the presence of a person of color has never been implausible in any part of the world, in any period of human history. Hell, a bunch of these movies were set after Shakespeare had born, lived, and died, but he still managed to write a play set centuries earlier featuring a black male lead in Italy. 

Second, and most importantly, it’s not like they are being assigned a setting at random and have to accommodate it in their character designs. The people at Disney choose to set film after film after film in France and Germany and Denmark.

It’s not that those areas produce more or better fairy tales and folk tales than any of the other continents, it’s that the stories that come from those areas are the ones Disney considers universal.

In the eyes of Disney, there’s a Princess for Black little girls to look up to, a Princess for Native little girls to look up to, a Princess for Arab little girls to look up to, a Princess for Asian little girls to look up to, and nine princesses for all little girls to look up to. It’s no coincidence that in almost all promotional art featuring the “Princess Lineup,” Jasmine, Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas are all standing in the back, usually obscured by other white Princesses’ dresses, while the blonde lady brigade stands in the front. 

And that is whitewashing.

Fascinating read

science-junkie:

itsrosewho:

FAMOUS AUTHORS

  • Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
  • The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
  • Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
  • Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.
  • Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
  • Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
  • Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
  • Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
  • The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
  • Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
  • Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
  • Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
  • Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
  • Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

MATH AND SCIENCE

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  • byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.
  • Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.
  • International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.
  • Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

PLAYS

  • ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.
  • Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.
  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.
  • Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”
  • ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

HISTORY AND CULTURE

  • LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
  • The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
  • Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
  • Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
  • Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

  • Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

  • Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
  • Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
  • Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
  • 2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
  • Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
  • Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
  • Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
  • Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

  • MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
  • TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
  • Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

  • The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
  • Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
  • Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
  • Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
  • Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
  • QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
  • CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
  • PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

  • Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
  • World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
  • DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
  • A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.
  • Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.
  • ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.
  • Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.
  • Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

… and here is a gift for all of us.