#hello void this is ridiculosity

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why did you people come up with russian names for what is supposed to be a movie set in italy. what was the thought process here. why does she sound like she walked out of a tolstoy novel

#just read a post defending katyas crimes #katyas crimes are that her husband is operating the mafia empire in italy #when she rightfully belongs in idk petersburg. #goncharov #hello void this is ridiculosity #unreality #I beg of you people when you encounter this post #Please go into the notes and find a reblog where I acknowledge your drags #PLEASE

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rian johnson took all that time, put in all that effort to make glass onion a fantastic period piece to the first four months of pandemic, a prescient narrative that anticipates the stupidity of rich billionaires, and then pulled the rug from under us because the world of benoit blanc just straight up doesn't have the mona lisa anymore

#Some geniuses in the notes are talking about how it wasn't the real mona lisa #And I'm editing my tags because tumblr is a website with minimal reading comprehension #But the POINT is that he went through all that effort to make the world canon complaint with ours #Only to DESTROY a cultural artefact real or not #Having massive political implications for the world #And that's what I was pointing out. Here and in another reblog that presumably no one will care to fish out #It's in the replies for those looking #Anyway I hope rian johnson makes ten of these without the mona lisa #Also as a side note. So many movies have ignored covid #Not this man. He's like no we'll include it. But if we divert from canon reality #We're going to destroy the mona lisa #Love that for him. Icon #hello void this is ridiculosity #knives out #glass onion

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saw someone say miguel has slutty energy. look, i see u ppl who find him attractive im with u, ur valid, i love you. but. this is not a man with slutty energy. if i went and flirted with him he'd say "this isn't a canon typical event" and move on

#across the spiderverse #spiderverse #hello void this is ridiculosity #HE'S JUST NOT SOMEONE WHO'D FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES YK

[wherestoriescomefrom]

Rowling’s school is an imagination of what she wants a school to be, regardless of whether or not real schools are quite like that. Experience and scholarship have taught us that schools are not the egalitarian spaces they are imagined to be. The rich variety of literature that focuses on the classroom would be impossible to summarise: in particular, post-colonial scholars have focussed on the many inequalities perpetrated by the imposition of the British schooling system.

When placed in this context, one cannot escape the underlying implication of Hogwarts: that to have extraordinary agency, one would have to be a rather brilliant student of the British curriculum, preferably with access to one of the elite boarding schools that foster and nurture this kind of magic. By framing education as one of the central ways through which the magic of childhood can be imagined, we do a great disservice to forms of childhood that do not rely on schooling at all. And if children in schools have access to grand magic, so should everyone else.

[...]

The existence of the magical school is a complicated thing — it necessitates the existence of a colonial legacy that allowed schools to become part of our everyday. It further necessitates a complex relationship with the more untameable, the wilder — magic. Almost all magical schools are somewhere or the other problems because of this — they cannot help but be antithetical to what they are meant to provide students. The Scholomance is not a refuge; it is not a safe space; it provides so much agency to children — at the expense of their lives.

— Why Do We Keep Inventing the Magical School?

#shocking im sharing some of my own writing on my blog #hello void this is ridiculosity #fantasy fiction #anti harry potter #harry potter #magical schools #naomi novik #the scholomance

[wherestoriescomefrom]

hehe

#hello void this is ridiculosity #music

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derry girls "the best of (character name)" videos make no sense because every second of the show and every character is funny all the time and making any compilation is fundamentally an oxymoron

#derry girls #just incomplete to watch a best of orla video. now i need to rewatch the show #hello void this is ridiculosity

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im literally about to weep guys i need to make a case for pigeons in front of a pigeon skeptic and i can't find that one really beautiful article/quote/post about pigeons what is my meticulous tagging system for

#HELP #hello void this is ridiculosity #I'M DELAYING MAKING DINNER FOR THIS NONSENSE #AND GOD KNOWS HOW LONG MAKING THE ATTA FOR THE PARANTHAS WILL TAKE ME

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hello all!! i had something cool to tell you guys that i don't mind sharing on tumblr, bUT, @readingthenight, i, and one more of our friends who refuses to be tagged in this post started a substack newsletter for reading recommendations. i figured i spend ages on this blog talking about all the books i'm reading anyway, might as well make it official, and readingthenight agreed (she does the same thing, only less publicly). here is the link for the same!!

all of us are indian, so we'll have at least one or two books from south asia and other south asian regions. we're only dropping this once a month with six recommendations, and at least ONE free text in the middle of it. you can also follow this instagram if you like, because we DEFINITELY want to do themed months and it would be great to have people participate in that!! lastly, some of u cool people read much more than me, so i will 100% be soliciting recommendations from u guys <3

#hello void this is ridiculosity #booklr #i talk about books for the hundredth time like its a new thing #like. officially :) #reading recommendations #reading recs mail actually

[wherestoriescomefrom]

on god i know the pressure is going to just start increasing but i hate it when the marriage stuff starts

#hello void this is ridiculosity

[wherestoriescomefrom]

something really interesting about the way bhagat singh is remembered. for leftists in India, he's everything - on wall murals, on paintings, in our salutes and in the pamphlets. but people outside that... like my mum and dad don't know him that way. he's just a revolutionary in the broader unconscious. just a brave man who gave his life for the country. someone from Rang De Basanti, i guess.

and then there's this other, more complex, more interesting Bhagat Singh of his letters... of leftist imagination. someone who stridently stood against Indian capitalism as well as colonisation. my friend read his letters in Punjabi, her first introduction to leftism was him. i met him on wall paintings at university with quotes i couldn't have imagined he said. quotes that wouldn't fit in Rang De Basanti.

man who gave up his life for freedom, indeed

#Just some feelings I have when I thjnk of him idk #bhagat singh #indian politics #hello void this is ridiculosity

[wherestoriescomefrom]

i made dahi bhindi masala if you even care

#kabitas kitchen for the win #hello void this is ridiculosity #food

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one of the things people don't mention about elitism in the academy is how fucking vindictive the people who uphold elitism are. after having spent so many years having done my graduate and postgraduate degrees, it's terrifying to watch people who are cruel, harsh, unkind, and dismissive slowly gain positions of power in the academy. and you know, you know that the elitism is just the cover for that cruelty, the kernel that they hide with big words that are meant to alienate students from non upper class, upper caste backgrounds. i am as upper caste as they come, but even i, as a girl from a tier two city felt so lonely when i first started literature. and then, the asshole who told me that my poetry would only count if it fell into the domain of genius in the way eliot described it has now become a graduate assistant and phd scholar in an ivy?

#indian politics #academia #hello void this is ridiculosity

[wherestoriescomefrom]

What do you do to be anti caste in praxis

tricky question, idk how to answer this properly. i'll go for it in as practical a way as possible:

participating in public culture method: i'm a phd student, and yes, the student unions in india have really suffered in the last few years, but i was and am part of my previous university's union as well as my current one. i will admit this isn't a perfect answer to participating in public culture, because i do have it easy. i'm generally privileged, and yes, while it was very difficult going against my whole family during some of the movements and protests and putting my future on the line a few times, i still have it a lot easier than many people who come from more marginalised backgrounds. jnu also had some ready political parties for me to support (my particular favourite was BASO and BAPSA), but i think there are many parties that do organise on anti-caste lines, no matter how problematic they are. i have some issues with Chandrashekhar Azad in relation to gender and sexuality, but on the whole, Bhim Army does some decent work. i'd love to vote for BSP (as i am from UP some of this might be related to UP) but i fear they have very little chance of winning, and the situation in UP is very bet on a horse that has a chance right now. i think this is one of the most obvious ways to get policy changes started, if nothing else, which is why i think it is actually important to participate in public culture. i know everyone can't do it, but i make it a point to go home to vote for every major election. however, i also know this is very tricky for people depending on where they are in life. i had very little agency when i was in undergraduate, but i have more now, so that helps.

helping people around you method: this is trickier because it has involved a lot of serious unlearning on my end, because i was and am casteist in ways that show up, and this is the part that really involves making friends with people who are explicitly Not Like Me. and that also means i have to be a friendly, caring, and generally kind individual or no one will want to be friends with me. but this is also one of the best methods - once you are perceived as generally kind and caring by your peers, they are more open about what they might need, and then you can REALLY use your caste privilege for support. and i don't want to say this like an upper caste saviour or anything, but you can really use your privilege to amplify other people's needs and wants. like a bulwark?? you know what i mean. one of the reasons why i ended up on the forefront of negotiations with my teachers was because i was an upper caste girl who generally spoke well and had the privilege to not back down. it was mostly very straightforward things, like my friends not having access to decent internet during the pandemic and needing extensions on all their assignments, but this is something that was doable and we managed it together (literally i remember as i composed messages on one chat with the teachers, i had ann and huda going off on the side about what else we could say and we strategised together. good times). helping the people around you is also one of the easiest ways to learn more: i have a friend for whom i have done a lot of free editing over the years and it's usually dalit studies related, and when i say the research makes you rethink your whole life, the urban employment market, and also your worldview, i really mean it. and of course, this goes without saying, but being generally kind to everyone around you. this is also one of the best and most foolproof ways to make lifelong friends and i think that's just an added bonus of being anti caste, because it DOES give you a fuller life and more caring people around you. and this might sound a bit kitschy and cute, but i am fundamentally of the belief that all praxis and change has to be rooted, intrinsically, in love for the people around you. which is why this method is the one that has been the most fulfilling for me, personally.

talking to my relatives method: the details of which really vary from person to person, but @metamatar has a handy guide here, and i also really like doing something funky with mine (my parents, i mean), which is to make them follow the lack of resources. for example, i was giving an interview at EFLU for the phd seats and when my dad said i must not have gotten it because of reservations, i just said, well there were two seats total because of major fund cuts in education. its not reservations thats the problem but the lack of resources as a whole. this is generally a REALLY good method because it highlights the unfairness of the nation state in one go as well. of course, some relatives are too far gone, but the least you can do (i have found) is criticise them openly so they don't feel comfortable saying that shit around you. i also really like sending counter articles on family groups. once my Maama had sent some nonsense about the farm laws, and instead of debating him i sent a wire article on how the farm laws weren't even just about the farmers. this is, unfortunately, the least rewarding method, but i fear it is also the most absolutely essential.

the method that is most difficult, which is changing how you think method: i have said it before, but of course i haven't unpeeled the layers of conditioning that are still part of me. i think things that generally help me in this is always following the trail of money and labour in the world around me, and seeing where it is rooted. you'd be surprised at how many things are just casteist practices disguised as other things if you just put your mind to it a little.

i think the most difficult thing in all of this has been learning that despite all this, i will still, 100% make mistakes. the most important thing for me is to always do my best to fix them, and to make sure no one gets hurt because of my actions, or exploited. the upshot of this is that i have simply lost the uttar-pradesh-given ability to bargain with anyone. no, really. i can't even do it with autowallahs anymore. and janpath?? forget it. if the man says the pants are for 600 i will simply pay him that if i can afford it or walk away. i was literally in sarojini once and the shopkeeper quoted 400 for like, a cute little shrug or something, and i just walked away and he called me back like ma'am???? aren't you supposed to bargain??? then when i didn't he reduced it himself to 300. then when i was like okay, and started to pay him, he was like omg you are so bhola...... give 200 for it jfc. of course he also flirted with me while doing that, which is the sarojini-given right of all shopkeepers. but you see??? i can't bargain anymore. i just can't do it, if someone says this is the price of my labour i either decide i can afford it or i move on.

what was i saying?? yeah i still make mistakes, all the time. i just try to correct them as best as possible.

EDIT: i forgot, but one thing that i have found works for me is to really amplify reading material and voices that are not mine. like, you know, to always recommend work by dalit and bahujan writers, to always read more of it as well?? that stuff

#indian politics #casteism #hello void this is ridiculosity #the people??? want me to answer???

[wherestoriescomefrom]

south delhi fuckboys are supposed to be good at this right

#Just ignore me I'm having a hook up tonight and pondering to myself #hello void this is ridiculosity

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the anxiety has been particularly bad lately but at the very least tomorrow i will know whats going on with me. i feel quite lost and lonely at times during this, but whatever, we keep pushing through. if anything, while i've been feeling shit, delhi has decided to turn up good weather. fucking typical. always happens like this, btw, when my heart was broken in 2020, the weather was fucking gorgeous.

it's gonna be fine. it's gonna rain today. anxiety wrestle ho jayegi

#hello void this is ridiculosity

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the few times i spoke to someone with an american accent it was always insane, lost my mind over the fact that that was a real person and not someone in a tv show or something. like yes, u have those wild little "ums" and those "i think" prefixes before every sentence. how could i forget my favourite, "and like." and you're NOT in a tv show??? insane. absurd. crazy.

#american accents ALWAYS feel like they belong in a screen somewhere #thats not supposed to be a real person #thats supposed to be a character #hello void this is ridiculosity #linguistics