Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.
I have been waiting for this post all my life.
They are indeed purple, But one thing you’ve missed: The concept of “purple” Didn’t always exist.
Some cultures lack names For a color, you see. Hence good old Homer And his “wine-dark sea.”
A usage so quaint, A phrasing so old, For verses of romance Is sheer fucking gold.
So roses are red. Violets once were called blue. I’m hugely pedantic But what else is new?
My friend you’re not wrong
About Homer’s wine-ey sea!
Colours are a matter
Of cultural contingency;
Words are in flux
And meanings they drift
But the word purple
You’ve given short shrift.
The concept of purple,
My friends, is old
And refers to a pigment
once precious as gold.
By crushing up molluscs
From the wine-dark sea
You make a dye:
Imperial decree
Meant that in Rome,
to wear purpura
was a privilege reserved
For only the emperor!
The word ‘purple’,
for clothes so fancy,
Entered English
By the ninth century
.
Why then are voilets
Not purple in song?
The dye from this mollusc,
known for so long
Is almost magenta;
More red than blue.
The concept of purple
is old, and yet new.
The dye is red,
So this might be true:
Roses are purple
And violets are blue
.
While this song makes me merry, Tyrian purple dyes many a hue From magenta to berry And a true purple too.
But fun as it is to watch this poetic race The answer is staring you right in the face: Roses are red and violets are blue Because nothing fucking rhymes with purple.
Y’all think being in a goth relationship means wearing white makeup together but Mary Shelley lost her virginity on her mother’s grave so maybe step it up.
Mary Shelley carried her husband’s heart around and lived in a crypt after he died. No one will ever be as goth as Mary Shelley.
She also wasn’t carrying around, like, a mummified heart. Her husband’s heart had calcified, meaning it had grown bone within itself and possibly around itself, and it is this heart of bone which she carried. When she was young she carried it wrapped in a silk pouch, and when older it was kept in her desk, wrapped in a page from his poem Adonais. Adonais was one of his last poems, in which a deceased poet’s subjects (nature, Spring, the stars) mourn him, and long to join him in death. Then the narrator tells them do not mourn, for he has gone beyond where the minds and emotions of humans matter, to the Natural Spirit that is the source of all beauty.
Of his poems, it is this which she wrapped his heart in. There is none. more. goth.
It’s sad to realize that peak goth was hit so long ago
It usually passes under the radar of famous firsts, but on January 18, 1958, Willie O’Ree of Fredericton, New Brunswick and the Boston Bruins overcame the “behind closed doors” racism of his sport to become the first black NHL player.
Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole – oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms)was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905.
The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Got that?
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece – ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
For those wanting to learn more about Margery, here’s a podcast (x).
Londonist’s roundup of cutaway maps – many from the outstanding Transport Museum in Covent Garden – combines the nerdy excitement of hidden tunnels with the aesthetic pleasure of isomorophic cutaway art, along with some interesting commentary on both the development of subterranean tunnels and works and the history of representing the built environment underground in two-dimension artwork.
i just remembered this story my dad told me one time, about abraham lincoln
a guy challenged abe to a duel once. lincoln very much did not want to duel this cat.
so lincoln agreed, on the condition he got to choose the weapon. maybe that was how it generally went in 19th century dueling culture, i have no idea.
the guy said “sure”
lincoln said, “ok. broadswords.”
so that poor would-be opponent shows up on the day of the would-be duel, and abe is outside, doing, like, some quick sword warmups.
now, back in lincoln’s day, he was, as any american schoolchild can tell you, the tallest fucking dude on the entire fucking planet, so please try to even imagine the majestic reach of this stovepiped giant’s condor-like wingspan.
(wingspan plus broadsword.)
abe’s enemy takes one look at this, does some quick mental calculations on his own arm length (mortal, human), turns around and goes home.
the best part is that, as i remember it, lincoln of course had no fucking idea how to swordfight. it was the 1800s. we had guns. he’d just been, like, waving this giant sword around haphazardly, whacking at tree limbs, making his arms look as big as possible because he knew this joker could see him, and he knew that guy didn’t know that lincoln didn’t know what the hell to do with a broadsword.
anyway, i don’t actually know if that story is true or not but i really really hope it is. i would love to know that the president who defeated the confederacy was also fucking hilarious.
PLOT TWIST: the real version is considerably funnier
This is great and I just wanna add that the rules of early 19th century American gentleman’s duels did in fact state that whoever offered the challenge of a duel did not choose the weapons that would be used. The challenger would demand a duel and the challengee would have to accept or face considerable dishonor, but the challengee was permitted (nay, required) to select the weapon, date, and time. Duels were typically scheduled for two weeks from whenever the challenge was issued in the hopes that relatives would be able to sort out the issue in the meantime and then the duel could be honorably cancelled.
wait so like i get that it was a Matter of Utmost Grave Importance to these dudes
but you are in fact telling me that an early nineteenth century American gentleman could be challenged to a duel and, in accordance with the culture of the time, technically he could be like “fuck it let’s have a pillow fight” and the other guy would have to accept
oh my god why did anybody ever kill anybody
what a profound and tragic failure of imagination
“the terms of the duel are a dance-off. bring your sickest moves, cad”
“meet me outside town, exactly 500 years from today. hope you like fighting a fucking skeleton”
today i found out that victor hugo has had more sex than possibly almost any other human that has lived on this planet.
he had so much sex his biographers straight up gave up trying to document all of his sexual partners. he was reported to fuck up to 3-9 times a day. He had a secret sex diary written in code. He had “official” and “unofficial” mistresses. One estimate was that he had ~200 sexual partners in two years.
Icon.
don’t forget that on the day of his funeral all the brothels in Paris were closed because every single prostitute in the whole goddamn city was busy mourning him
Hey quick question what the fuck
the man reported on his hookups in his diary using latin code words and 2 million people attended his funeral, if that isnt balling idk what is
History wants so badly for Cleopatra to be beautiful. Like they can’t conceive of Rome being intimidated by anything less
because being a linguist, fleet commander, and powerful ruler doesn’t matter, only her looks
Her Arab contemporaries raved about her being very interested and knowledgeable in the sciences.
She completely reformed the system in Alexandria, and Egypt at large; making it much more of a functional powerhouse.
She did what 300 years of her ancestors couldn’t: Managed to get the support of both the Greek AND Egyptian subjects she ruled.
There is a sculpture that has been identified as her, through comparisons to coins minted under her rule, that proves beyond a doubt that she wasn’t particularly beautiful.
It isn’t that people just happen to believe it by mistake. Rome was fucking terrified of her and painted her as a vapid, scheming, beautiful, sex obsessed queen to discredit her to their people. She was a threat, and that was how they handled it. The unfortunate thing is that that is the most surviving record of her. A smear campaign against one of the smartest, most powerful women in human history.
This is a woman who became her father’s co-ruler at nearly 14 years old in order to train for her actual ascension to the throne, who was forced to marry her own siblings in order to keep her power, and it’s widely believed that she poisoned them so she could rule alone. She’s a Pharaoh who led Egypt into a new era of wealth, who went fearlessly into war to protect her rule and Egypt’s independence from the Roman empire, a woman who took her own life rather than face being raped and tortured by her conquerors, knowing full well that she was leaving her surviving children in their uncertain mercy. Cleopatra is one of the most interesting, morally ambiguous, complexing historical figures we have and the media has turned her into a tantalizing sex object for the male gaze.
Even after Cleopatra died her influence on those around her lived on: her daughter, Cleopatra Selene, was the only child of Cleopatra’s to live to adulthood, and she became queen of Mauretania along with her husband Juba and it’s believed they married for love, which was extremely rare for that time period, especially among nobles/the upper class. Not only did she grow up in the house of her mother’s worst enemy and technical murderer, but she still went on to become a queen who possessed an equal amount of political power as her husband, even having her face minted on coins on the opposite side of his likeness, showing they were equal rulers.
Cleopatra and her influence on history, and her daughter’s legacy, have both been brushed aside in favour of the sexy Cleopatra visage. It’s bullshit. Egyptian mythology is interesting and vivid, and full of powerful women and it’s bullshit that we take some of the most powerful women in Africa’s history and try to turn them into fashion icons or sluts who only ruled through toying with men.
I LIVE FOR PEOPLE TO KNOW THIS, people still refuse to believe that a woman can/could have achieved anything without beauty or fucking magical powers
More. The fact that Cleopatra’s face appears on statues and coins in a way that doesn’t reflect the beauty standards of the time means she WANTED it that way. We know what they beauty standards were because every other fucker had statues made with very similar features. Not Cleopatra. She was like, this is MY face, you will love it as it is.
Chinese emperor Ai of Han, fell in love with a minor official, a man named Dong Xian, and bestowed upon him great political power and a magnificent palace. Legend has it that one day while the two men were sleeping in the same bed, the emperor was roused from his sleep by pressing business. Dong Xian had fallen asleep across the emperor’s robe, but rather than awaken his peaceful lover, the Emperor cut his robe free at the sleeve. Thus “the passion of the cut sleeve” became a euphemism for same-sex love in China. — R.G.L.
get you a dude who will fuck up his own clothing for you
NO OKAY THIS IS REALLY COOL SO SHUT UP AND LISTEN KIDS. Ancient China was super chill about homosexuality okay. Like we have gay emperors and feudal lords, lesbian princesses who were girlfriends with their serving maids, gay ass poets who wrote lots of poems about that one courtesan who played the guzheng so well.
In fact homosexuality was so okay that in Shiji, which is basically the Bible of Ancient Chinese history, there is an entire section dedicated to the gay lovers of emperors. What’s the best part? All the laws and criticism about homosexuality in Ancient China were all about shit like prostitution and rape. These laws were outlawing homosexual stuff were all very specific.
For example, there were laws banning male prostitution, but no laws against homosexuality. These laws were passed to stop the spread of prostitution and laws targeting prostitution in general were pretty common in Chinese history. There were also really strict laws about male rape. Rape was punishable by death, regardless of the gender of the victim. Rape a girl, you die. Rape a guy, you die. Have sex with a minor, you die regardless of whether it was consensual. The lightest sentence you could get was slavery where you were bound to the army.
Also scholars wrote essays criticising the boyfriends of emperors, saying that they distracted the emperor from work blah blah blah but THEY ALSO DID THE SAME FOR THE CONCUBINES. That’s right – the issue wasn’t homosexuality but rather the hormones of the emperor. They didn’t care about the gender of the emperor’s favourite lover but rather the fact that the emperor was too horny to get shit done.
“But WAIT, Modern China is a hardass about homosexuality!!!! How do you explain that!”
Yes. That. That’s because of the late Qing years where Western influences entered the country and brought their gross ass homophobic attitudes with them. And the Qing government was so anxious to seem modern and be seen as equals to their Western counterparts. So they adopted Western ways and discarded their previous attitudes about homosexuality. Hence you have Modern China.
So the next time someone tries to tell you that being LGBT is wrong because it goes against traditional Chinese values, tell them to go fuck themselves with 3000 years of Chinese queerness.
“Tell them to go fuck themselves with 3000 years of Chinese queerness.”
Steel Phoenix Studios 