June 2011
May 2011
“I’m not big on women looking naive. There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance.”
—
Alexander McQueen (via bthny)
Sorry my blorg is so wordy today, but this quote is killing me. Thank you, Lee, for explicating exactly my problem with every wispy, soft-focus, skinny white girl in a field blog and editorial. Naivete is easy to love because it gives everything and asks nothing in return, but why would you want to be the person who asks nothing? This dire selflessness of love is a plot device, a notion fit for sad Victorian consumptives, not for real full human people with needs and desires and agency of our own.
Let’s not collaborate in making ourselves the perfect, needless, quasi-love object for emotionally stunted malaise addicts and wound-lickers who wouldn’t know an equal if it knocked them on their asses. Let’s be real and present and strong and brave, and ever watchful for the person who sees this in us, like the ancient Persian astronomers who divined heroes and warriors in the din of the night sky, and who, finally, can love us for it.
(via borninflames)
#twee is counterrevolutionary
(via landlessness)
;_________________________________; to the commentary. manifesto/fighting words. i need that tattooed on my forehead.
(via girlyfolk)
“Grammar too often gets confused with what it is designed to produce, which is fluency. Fluency here is defined not just by your ability to speak or write in a particular language but by a certain facility with that language, the ability to make words do exactly what you want them to do, to make them sparkle and titillate and inspire, to not just say the right thing but to sound good doing it. And that may or may not include utilizing proper grammar. Often fluency means learning precisely when to follow the rules and when to break them, to tune the correctness of your usage to the expectations of your audience (idiom!). Or to use non-standard constructions for effect (Iseewhatyoudidthere). Fluency is the ability to say exactly what you mean exactly how you want, which is harder than it sounds.”
—
Shitty First Drafts: a blog about culture, writing, and pedagogy (via thekeri)
As someone whose first language (and second) isn’t English, I thought for the longest time that I wasn’t a good writer because I just couldn’t get a perfect grasp of English grammar. It’s really hard! There’s a ton of exceptions and I have about 4 other syntax families floating around in my head. For many foreign-born, they will never achieve the same level of grammar competency as native-born English speakers. A lot of us are very self-conscious about this and can be afraid to express ourselves in writing/not reach our full potential because of syntactical inhibitions. I read a great article about syntax as a means of oppression a while back, and in a way, when its usage extends from clarity into militaristic application and mockery, it oppresses and negates the point of the writing: “If you can’t write in perfect English, then you don’t deserve to be heard.”
(via baseln)
100% agreed with the above, though I’ve always personally wished I had better grammar, just so that when I broke the rules I could do it with more deliberation and to greater effect.
