Dress Worn by Pattie Boyd for a flight from London Heathrow to Los Angeles with George Harrison, Neil Aspinall and Alexis 'Magic Alex' Mardas on 1 August 1967

Designed by The Fool

1967

Christie's: The Pattie Boyd Collection (Lot 11)

the thing about them fandom puritans is a lot of them are also into some weird shit but they'll either not know it (can't really blame them for that one, lack of education and all) or they'll come up with the most batshit, contortionistic mental gymnastics to try to convince everyone "mine doesn't count, so don't judge me, but you should bully those other degenerate perverts"

me every day without fail: I'll do [chore] when I get home

me when I get home:

like with lolita I feel like even when people are defending the book they tend to go too far in the wrong direction and flatten it into "well obviously the book isn't sympathetic towards pedophilia, you're supposed to hate humbert and think he's disgusting at all times" and I just feel like that's reductive bc like. the book is absolutely not sympathetic towards pedophilia but imo you ARE supposed to find humbert funny and kind of tragic and charming and that's like. the point! like he's intentionally written to be all these things!

if the book wanted to just be like. a straightforward condemnation of pedophilia, then humbert wouldn't be the narrator. but it's not a book about child sexual abuse being bad -- like that kind of goes without saying, you don't really need to argue it -- it's a book about the ways humbert justifies his abuse to himself, and to the audience. it's a book that's largely about how stories are told, and the way personal and cultural narratives can be used to justify even the worst imaginable behavior. humbert doesn't describe himself abusing a child, he describes himself being 'seduced' by a 'nymphet'; he likens his relationship to that of dante and beatrice or petrarch and laureen to establish historical legitimacy and lend a sort of tragic romanticism to it. it almost feels like the book is less focused on the story itself, and more on the way humbert spins it. he isn't written to be an obviously hateable monster, he's written to be erudite and tragic and funny, and that's because the book isn't trying to teach you that child abuse is bad, it's demonstrating the ways that being erudite and tragic and funny can be used to normalize and justify something that you already know is bad. imo it's largely a book about the ways that someone can construct a mythology to convince themselves of anything, and how if we don't think critically about what we're told then we can fall into the same trap.

it's also absolutely a story about reading past the lines to figure out what's actually going on. like it's funny that the book has become such a touchstone for discourse about Media Literacy bc I really think that 'media literacy' is like. one of the core themes. like the book kind of requires that you ignore the way humbert writes to make out what he's actually describing; the worse his behavior gets, the more flowery and beautiful his writing becomes. the story the book tells if you buy into humbert's mythology and the story it tells if you don't are dramatically different.

like the ways that the book depicts dolores suffering are there, but you almost have to read past the narrative humbert presents to see them, right? like when he complains about dolores being irritable and cruel and moody, he's presenting the picture of a fickle and unreasonable WOMAN who is toying with his emotions. but when you read what he's actually describing instead of the way he describes it, it reads like a fact sheet on spotting child abuse! she has mood swings, she lashes out at people, nothing makes her happy, she cries herself to sleep most nights. if we read humbert's account at face value, she's a fickle seductress who gets a sick thrill out of hurting him; if we recognize his bias and intentions in writing it, she's a deeply depressed and traumatized child still attempting to resist her abuser despite everything she's been through. like it's as close to an exercise in 'media literacy' as a book can get in that regard.

The last three digits of your current follower count is the Dewey Decimal Classification subject on which you must immediately give a 15-minute presentation.

How would you do?

Yume 2kki - Eyeball Cherry Fields (Toilet Room)

my number one skill is being sooo cute and my number two skill is the ancient curse

also, a friendly reminder, the world we live in now consists of an active genocide.

of warcrimes being posted on twitter by the official account of israeli government.

of people looking at children, women and men being bombed, killed, starved and butchered and saying it is okay because of a single terrorist group, THAT ISRAEL CREATED.

of westerners saying to look away from the slaughter happening in gaza because your mental health is more important than thousands of lives.

of israeli politicians straight up using propaganda from nazi handbooks to dehumanise palestinians, calling them less than human, less than the rest of us, animals.

and what one palestinian man posted on his social media hit me more than anything: “if we actually were animals, people would care.”

I hate when people say ohhhh your pets only love you because you feed them. as if that wasn't the first form of love any of us felt. get real.