You guys may be too young to remember, but I remember tuning in on TV with 600 million other viewers to watch Stevie Wonder live at Wembley Stadium for Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday celebration tribute in 1988. There were technical difficulties and Stevie Wonder couldn't go on yet. The crowd was antsy, milling around, singing their own songs. The TV cameras were rolling and the show had to go on, so TOTALLY UNKNOWN ARTIST TRACY CHAPMAN GOT UP ON STAGE AND PLAYED FAST CAR ARMED WITH ONLY HER GUITAR.
The crowd fell silent. Captivated by the absolute raw honesty and talent on display. Did we know we were witnessing history? A black queer artist who would rocket to fame and win a Grammy for this song the following year? I don't remember.
What I do remember is getting to the end of the song and not caring about Stevie Wonder any more. I wanted to know who this woman was!
Watch Tracy Chapman stun a rowdy crowd into silence:
Writing fanfiction for Lord of the Rings: I reach back through the decades to take JRR Tolkien’s hand. I will tell the queer story that you could not tell in life, my friend, carefully uncovering a narrative from within the lines of your tale, illuminating the hints and moments of emotion that perhaps even you did not fully understand
Writing fanfiction for Sherlock Holmes: hey Arthur Conan Doyle quick question did you MEAN to create a queer icon or did you just have dinner with Oscar Wilde once and thought 'what if he solved crimes'? I don't really care either way. He’s escaped his enclosure and lives in my brain now. we're having fun
“Between 1992–2003, $14.4 billion was spent in total in the 109 countries studied…That investment resulted in a 29 percent-per-country average decrease in the rate of biodiversity decline…”
This is one of the first large-scale studies to show that investment in conservation really does work. The study also examined how conservation dollars could be spent most effectively in different locations to slow biodiversity loss.
If people were too mean to you when you were growing up, a newborn animal will materialize inside your brain and it’s so so scared and shivering and it will stay there for years. Decades, even. And whenever you say something kind of weird but true to your heart the animal will tell you “Noo! You can’t say that! If you say that, everyone will hate you!”. The animal means well. It’s so so small and everything is so scary for them and it’s just trying to protect you. But listen to me. Listen to me. Whenever this happens, you can’t do what the animal says. You can’t. If you do, you’ll become as scared as the animal. You have to keep saying weird shit. You have to keep doing things the animal wouldn’t approve of. If you do enough things that scare the animal, maybe one day it’ll go to sleep.
helloooo this is a MASTER POST of my Sherlock Holmes annotations, aka shitpost doodles of my favorite parts with occasional headcanons. I will pin this so it's available and update it as I go because this feels like it's becoming a full series, god help me.
I'm reading the stories in the order they occurred (according to Baring-Gould, who I am currently arm wrestling in the astral plane over how many wives Watson had) so that's how I will present them!
EDIT: decided to draw them in the order that makes sense to me, Baring-Gould you’re too silly
EDIT 2: this is basically a webcomic at this point, with ongoing continuity and a romantic storyline that can be enjoyed if you read in order. I did not intend this, but I have Sherlock Holmes disease and there's only one cure (doing this)