PERFECT HURT/COMFORT GIF!!

PERFECT HURT/COMFORT GIF!!

Reading fanfiction is like

To celebrate Halloween, we’re publishing a selection of excerpts from David J. Skal’s Something in the Blood, a biography of Bram Stoker, out this month with Liveright. Today: letters between Stoker and Walt Whitman, published in full for the first time in Something in the Blood. Stoker, moved by Leaves of Grass, was an ardent fan of Whitman—he and his Trinity College peers called themselves “Walt Whitmanites.” He kept his first letter to the poet, a meandering and adoring document, in his desk for four years before gathering the courage to send it.  

Read on here.

Polls start opening in under 12 hours but felony convictions disenfranchise more than 5 million people, including 7% of the African-American community. A major contributor to the problem is the school-to-prison pipeline: A system of flawed policies that send at-risk youth—especially people of color—directly into the criminal justice system.

Mic’s The Movement (@the-movemnt​) did an Issue Time on the subject. It’s well worth your time, and it’ll give you plenty to chew on when you ✧･ﾟ*go and vote tomorrow*･ﾟ✧

Art by Tumblr Creatr @jxiaoo

Okay, so. The problem with Tumblr is that even though it’s a great place to talk about social justice concepts it isn’t a great place to mobilize or organize political change. That means that social justice on here mostly ends up being performative rather than active.

Unfortunately the easiest way to perform your ideological purity within an online community is to point the finger at those who are less pure (see: callout posts, blacklists, smackdowns, receipt pulling, reductive black-and-white mantras/statements, ‘10 Reasons Why So-and-So Isn’t a Real Feminist’, and so on). I see this happening more and more and it makes me really uncomfortable because a) it discourages necessary discussion and learning within social movements by framing all differences/disagreements as moral battles where one person is right and the other person is terrible and b) it reduces social justice to a passive, self-congratulatory performance of personal identity rather than an active, organized pursuit of political change.

Look: Tumblr is many great things, but it is not a safe space. The safe space (a concept originating in the women’s liberation movement) is designed to allow members of a community to speak freely and compare personal experiences with the assurance of respect and the intention of expanding ideas while also finding common ground. Tumblr doesn’t work that way. It’s a vast online forum where likes, reblogs, and followers determine whether or not a particular voice is heard, and it’s just too fast, too big, too diverse, and too anonymous to assume good-will and common interest from all participants. Therefore, many people’s chief priority becomes loudly proving their loyalty to a particular group, as group members who say the wrong thing risk being cast out, blacklisted, harassed, and even threatened.

The result is that Tumblr communities become more polarized, beliefs become more entrenched, thought-terminating cliches abound, common interests are overlooked, and participants are hesitant to ask questions or do anything that might open them to criticism or condemnation (which naturally includes most meaningful political action).

And the problem with this Revenge of the Sith post-9/11 ‘you’re either with us 100% or you’re the enemy’ attitude (where we refuse to work with or even listen to people whose beliefs differ from ours in any way) isn’t just that it’s a little cultish and scary, it’s that it’s totally unsustainable in politics. It’s worth remembering that constantly culling a movement to get rid of less-than-perfect members doesn’t just make the movement purer and purer, it makes it smaller and weaker.

rabbits only flop over like that if they feel completely safe btw

Why the Hogwarts Houses vote for Hillary

Gryffindor: who is braver than Hillary? Speaking up for women’s rights and gay rights in a room full of human rights violators? Defending late term abortion on national TV? Calling out a sometimes-violent bully while he’s trying to intimidate her? Racking up a million firsts? Literally when she was in college she was the first student commencement speaker and on the spot called out the US Senator who had spoken just before her because he was opposed to protesting. She’s been dragged six ways from Sunday over the course of decades and it’s never stopped her standing up for what she believes in. She’s courageous to the core and even in situations that would make other people cry, she keeps fighting.

Ravenclaw: does anyone know their shit or value policy like Hillary? On top of being brilliant and experienced, she values expertise. Her advisors include a Nobel-prize winning economist, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, a former CIA director, a former Secretary of State (in addition to being one herself), and more community leaders, policy experts, think tank leaders, and top professors than you could count. Plus she makes a point of meeting with people like the Mothers of the Movement, which lets her integrate the kind of knowledge and experience that can’t come from books. Her bullpen is deep and her circles are broad. If you want a president who writes policy based on facts, if you care about having a president who knows their stuff and privileges knowledge, this is your candidate.

Hufflepuff: keeping people safe and healthy and creating opportunity has always been at the core of what Hillary does. Working for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which lets 8 million kids go to the doctor? Making sure undocumented families can stay together? Keeping POC safe? Letting women choose? Fighting for LGBTQ rights? All part of Hillary’s past and her plan. She wants to reward hard work, too, with a $15 minimum wage and more protections for workers. She wants to make, and has been making, the playing field fairer and more open for everyone.

Slytherin: no one is better connected than Hillary; do you know how many people she’s supported, how many people owe her a favor? There are a million things the president can’t do on their own because they’re matters of state and local law: policing, traffic stops, sentencing for nonviolent offenses, most prison conditions, sex education, auto emissions, marriage and family law, conversion therapy bans, state tax policy, abortion restrictions. Hillary has helped so many people get elected over the last three decades, there are dozens and dozens of governors and mayors and state senators who owe her their careers and when she says “this is what we’re doing,” they’re gonna do it. That makes her a way more powerful potential president than anyone we’ve seen in decades.