one of the most important things ive learned from upper level biology education so far is that dna isnt the god-like all-powerful beacon of similarity between all living beings on the face of the earth as high school science textbooks will lead u to believe but actually is, in fact, the molecular equivalent of a smoldering dumpster fire that’s in a constant state of chaos and cellular scandal like some highlights:
-the parts of dna that just casually detach on a physical level from the main strand, do some sick skateboard tricks in the cytoplasm, and land somewhere else with 43552342 copies
-the parts that would do A Thing if they wern’t physically spooled up so tightly that the Make Thing Happen machinery couldnt get to them
-the dna thats in ur mitochondria bc the mitochondria used to be a bacteria that our bigger, buffer cellular ancestors just vored in the primordial ooze
-the dna that’s in chloroplasts in plants for the same reason
-rna….bitches be crazy like what is she gonna do next?? o she gonna act like a protein now and do shit?? im on the edge of my seat
-sometimes u just gotta make more chromosomes man like sometimes u just be hanging out and u gotta make ur genome 64 sizes larger and then change ur mind only 100,000 years later and delete half of it and thats just how it is on this bitch of an earth
-random shit from like 5 BCE is just casually left over everywhere like no susan i told u to leave that gene alone we might need it to fight dinosaurs again u just never know!!!!!
dna is earth’s biggest and brightest train wreck and honestly i wouldnt trust a dna molecule to water my plants let alone run my body but here we fucking are
Years ago, a friend went to a party, and something bothered him enough to rant to me about it later. And it bothered me that he was so incensed about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It seemed so petty for him to be upset, and even more so for me to be annoyed with him.
Recently, something reminded me of that scenario, and it made more sense. I’ll explain.
The party was a house party. One of those parties people throw if they’re renting a good-sized house in college. You know the type—loud music, Solo cups of beer, and somebody doing something drunk and stupid before the end of the night.
At some point, my friend had occasion to use the bathroom. When he went into the bathroom, he was disgusted to see that the hostess had left a basket of feminine hygiene products on the counter for guests to use if needed.
Later, when my friend told me about it, he wrinkled his nose and said, “Why would she do that? Guys don’t want to see that!”
When I suggested that she was just making them available in case a woman needed them, he insisted that they could be left in the cabinet or under the counter. Out of sight, anyway.
I wish I’d had, at the time, the ability to articulate what I can now.
To me, this situation is, while relatively benign, a perfect example of male privilege.
A man walks into the bathroom and sees a reminder that women have periods. And he’s disgusted. He wants that evidence hidden away because it offends his senses. How dare the hostess so blatantly present tampons and pads where a man might see them? There’s no reason for that!
A woman walks into the bathroom and sees that the hostess is being extra considerate. She gets it. She knows what it’s like to have a period start unexpectedly. The feeling of horror because she’s probably wearing something she doesn’t want ruined—it is a party after all. The sick embarrassment because someone might notice, especially if she’s wearing light-colored clothes, or worse, sat on the hostess’s white couch. The self-conscious, semi-nauseated feeling of trying to get through a social event after you’ve exhausted every avenue to get your hands on an emergency pad or tampon, and you’re just hoping to God that if you tie your jacket around your waist—you brought one, right?—keep your back to a wall, clench your buttcheeks, squeeze your thighs tightly together, and don’t…move…at…all—you might get through the evening, bow out gracefully, and find an all-night convenience store with a public restroom.
Or maybe she came to the party during her period, but didn’t bargain for her flow to suddenly get that heavy. Or she desperately needs a tampon, but her purse is in a room where a couple is not to be disturbed. Maybe she doesn’t know the hostess well enough to ask if she can use one. Or she doesn’t know anyone at the party well enough to ask. Or she figures she can make do with some wadded up toilet paper or something.
Whatever the case, she walks into the bathroom, and she hears the hostess saying “Hey, I know what it’s like, and just in case, I’ve got your back.” She sees someone saving her from what could be a minor annoyance or a major embarrassment.
The hostess gets it. The woman who just walked into the bathroom? She’s either going to see that the person throwing the party is super considerate, or she’s going to be whispering thanks to Jesus, Krishna, and whoever else is listening because that is a basket full of social saviors.
But to the guy who wrinkled his nose, it’s still offensive that those terrible little things are on the counter, reminding his delicate sensibilities that the playground part of a woman is occasionally unavailable due to a gross bodily function that he should never have to think about.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a tiny thing. It’s a tiny annoyance for the man, and a more significant but relatively tiny courtesy for the woman. After all these years, my friend has probably forgotten, but I never have. As a woman whose life is partially governed by a fickle uterus that can ruin an evening faster than a submerged iPhone, his story has stuck with me.
How can you be so offended by a small gesture that has zero effect on you, but could make such an enormous difference to the person who needs it?
It occurs to me now that this is a small but effective illustration of how men and women see the world. It’s part of the same thought process that measures a woman’s value through her bra size and her willingness to have sex with him—that everything about us is displayed or hidden based on how men perceive them or what he wants to get from us. Unattractive women should be as covered as possible, while attractive ones shouldn’t be hiding their assets from male eyes (or hands, or anything else he wishes to use).
A woman who isn’t smiling is an affront to him because it detracts from her prettiness, despite the fact that there might be a legitimate reason for her not to smile (or more to the point, that there isn’t a legitimate reason for her to smile). Her emotional state is irrelevant because she’s not being pretty. It’s the line of thinking where a man blames anything other than cheerful sexual consent on the woman being a bitch, being a lesbian, or—naturally—being on her period. Everything we do, from our facial expressions to our use of hygiene products, are filtered the lens of “how it looks to a man.”
It’s the line of thinking where a small gesture from one woman to another, an assurance that someone else understands and will help her without question or judgment, a gesture which could save a woman’s evening from being ruined, is trumped by a man’s desire to see an untainted landscape of pretty, smiling women with visible cleavage and vaginas that never bleed.
And people wonder why we still need feminism.
This is actually an amazing idea I hadn’t though of. (And apparently it has the bonus side effect of showing which of your male friends are whiny pissbabies.)
Really sorry that I can’t credit the person who made this because my lecturer sent it to us. Thought it was hilarious though and maybe it will help all of you if you’re struggling with tu and vous ! 😜✌🏼💡
So, many people discuss Tony Stark’s mental health, and they usually go along the lines of “Tony has a debilitating mental illness! He has PTSD and anxiety!” And later use to it excuse any bad things he’s done. And yes, Tony has mental illnesses that’s true but like…have we ever talked about Steve?
He obviously has PTSD (and most likely depression and anxiety) as a result of serving in freaking WWII. Watching friends (Bucky and Dr. Erskine) and fellow soldiers get killed, and being exposed to all other horrors of war, is bound to leave mental scars. Not only is he a veteran, but a man out of time. When Steve put that plane in the water, he was fully expecting death but instead woke up to a new century, where everyone he knew and loved was either dead or, in the case of Peggy, barley clinging to life and his memory. Seeing his old love, once full of life, in such a state likely made his depression worsen.
His PTSD is explicitly shown in The Avengers (the flashback scene in the gym where he is remembering the war, Peggy, and the plane crash) and Age of Ultron (his worst fear literally being not being able to live without war) and more subtly over the course of the Captain America trilogy. This isn’t even mentioning all of the trust and abandonment issues he likely has after being manipulated by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony (“you don’t deserve that shield!”) As well as finding out his best friend is alive and has been brainwashed to be a Nazi assassin.
Steve also displays a lot of suicidal tendencies, even before the war. He gets into fights with bigger, meaner bullies constantly and recklessly puts his life in unnecessary danger. Bucky even comments on this, “It’s almost like you like getting punched.” Later, in the barracks, Steve’s first instinct is to jump on a grenade to protect the other soldiers, instead of finding a solution that doesn’t endanger his life. These tendencies come from his (albeit stubborn) desire to do the right thing no matter what, protect people and show that he, skinny, sick, weak and “useless” in the eyes of 1940’s America, is good and that his life means something.
“Bucky, come on! There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them. That’s what you don’t understand. This isn’t about me.” “Right. Cause you got nothing to prove.”
“I know I’m asking a lot. But the price of freedom is high. It always has been. And it’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”
“You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”
In his quest to stop bullies, protect the little guy and stand up for what’s right, he equates being a hero with sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice being his own life for the greater good. Steve didn’t feel like he was good enough then, and he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough now. The only way to proven to himself that he is enough is to sacrifice himself for a cause, which leads to reckless behavior and a disregard for his own safety in favor of worrying about others.
(He obviously has a lot of unrealized and unresolved problems, but unlike Tony he uses healthy coping mechanisms (exercise, talking it out, making new friends with similar problems) to deal with his mental illness instead of hurting the people closest to him.)
Steve Rogers has mental illnesses that should not be forgotten about. Remember why he fights, what he fights for and what he has to overcome to fight at all.
Speak on it! Also I’m pretty sure Steve had daddy issues it’s a well known fact that his dad was an alcoholic and often abused his mother and I’m pretty sure him sometimes. And don’t forget that line in age if upfront right before they went to sokovia when Steve said “I’ve got no plans tomorrow night.” Thanks for the awareness!
Just FYI, in the films Steve’s father died before he was born, fighting in WWI, from mustard gas. (Steve was born in July 1918, his father dies from Mustard gas in the war which ended in Nov 1918, but the official MCU date is May 8th 1918 from supplemental material).
So in the films it seems Steve never knew his father, which bring it’s own set of Daddy issues, interestingly, none of which Steve feels the need to take out on other people. But it probably does add an extra layer to how quickly he became attached to the kind older male figure of Dr Erskine, he’s probably the closest thing to a father figure Steve ever had, as brief as it was.(Not forgetting that the project was called Project Rebirth–so he is in a way Steve’s father, the Steve who came out of the capsule after the serum)
To be honest Steve’s portrayal in some ways IMO is more realistic. In reality, many are quietly struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD and most people who know them wouldn’t even know it. Only those who are closest, which is how it is with Steve. Sam for example, clearly knows. Being a therapist himself, he immediately recognized what Steve was dealing with and comments on it in his first conversation with him.
It’s also why he uses the excuse of impressing the girls at work to invite him to come to see him at the VA.
I think it’s safe to say Natasha can see it too, which is probably one of the reasons she was always encouraging to go out on dates and be more social in Civil War and wanted to make sure she was there for him at Peggy’s funeral.
PLUS we also know even prior to entering the war and having all this stuff happen to him(mentor murdered in front of him, violent war, dying, man out of time, etc) if you look at the medical issues listed on his enlistment forms, one of the things mentioned is “nervous trouble of any sort” which was basically a catch all phrase for anxiety and/or panic attacks. It’s still used on Army forms, but now it actually has “anxiety or panic attacks” in parenthesis afterwards.
And given all his ailments, a number of which were quite serious, plus the frequently with which he was bullied, it’s probably no surprise if he sometimes had some anxiety.
On another note Steve’s mother died from Tuberculosis, which as we know was a painful and slow way to die, she died a few months after he turned 18 in Oct 1936. So Steve would most likely have spent at least his last few years of high school basically watching her die(not to mention she may have been put into quarantine where he would have been limited in how much he could see her, if he could see her at all – I do wonder if the filmmakers considered this, because that would have meant he may well have been trying to support himself, pay for an apartment and go to school on his own by the time he was 16 or so).
Point is, Steve Rogers life has been filed with pain, poverty, loneliness and trauma – and some of these stans think he doesn’t have trauma simply because he isn’t always acting it out on everyone around him?
All. This.
All this.
I know Tony’s on-screen visible panic attack was important to a lot of people. I dont want to belittle that at all. But I dont understand why Steve gets treated like this isnt an issue for him at all when it so obviously is. His symptoms in fact are much closer to mine. In his case its cultural, that a man of his time doesnt share those things. In my case, it wasn’t safe for me to visibly have panic attacks. But the end result is similar. And those results are routinely portrayed in the films.
It’s like the MCU fandom forgets or doesn’t want to hear or know that YES! there are fans who identify with Steve’s issues, Steve’s PTSD, Steve’s outlook.
Yes, believe it or not, there are those of us who identify with Steve.
how is it possible to love fictional characters this much and also have people always been this way?
like, did queen elizabeth lie in bed late sometimes thinking ‘VERILY I CANNOT EVEN FOR MERCUTIO HATH SLAIN ME WITH FEELS’
was caesar like ‘ET TU ODYSSEUS’
sometimes i wonder
oh my GOD
the answer is yes they did. there’s a lot of research about the highly emotional reactions to the first novels widely available in print.
here’s a thing; the printing press was invented in 1450 and whilst it was revolutionary it wasn’t very good. but then it got better over time and by the 16th century there were publications, novels, scientific journals, folios, pamphlets and newspapers all over Europe. at first most were educational or theological, or reprints of classical works.
however, novels gained in popularity, as basically what most people wanted was to read for pleasure. they became salacious, extremely dramatic, with tragic heroines and doomed love and flawed heroes (see classical literature, only more extreme.) books in the form of letters were common. sensationalism was par the course and apparently used to teach moral lessons. there was also a lot of erotica floating around.
but here’s the thing: due to the greater availability of literature and the rise of comfy furniture (i shit you not this is an actual historical fact, the 16th and 17th century was when beds and chairs got comfy) people started reading novels for pleasure, women especially. as these novels were highly emotional, they too became…highly emotional. there are loads of contemporary reports of young women especially fainting, having hysterics, or crying fits lasting for days due to the death of a character or their otp’s doomed love. they became insensible over books and characters, and were very vocal about it. men weren’t immune-there’s a long letter a middle-aged man wrote to the author of his favourite work basically saying that the novel is too sad, he can’t handle all his feels, if they don’t get together he won’t be able to go on, and his heart is already broken at the heroine’s tragic state (IIRC ehh).
conservatives at the time were seriously worried about the effects of literature on people’s mental health, and thought it damaging to both morals and society. so basically yes it is exactly like what happens on tumblr when we cry over attractive British men, only my historical theory (get me) is that their emotions were even more intense, as they hadn’t had a life of sensationalist media to numb the pain for them beforehand in the same way we do, nor did they have the giant group therapy session that is tumblr.
(don’t even get me started on the classical/early medieval dudes and their boners for the Iliad i will be here all week. suffice to say, the members of the Byzantine court used Homeric puns instead of talking normally to each other if someone who hand’t studied the classics was in the room. they had dickish fandom in-jokes. boom.)
I needed to know this.
See, we’re all just the current steps in a time-honored tradition! (And this post is good to read along with Affectingly’s post this week about old-school-fandom-and-history-and-stuff.
Ancient Iliad fandom is intense
Alexander the Great and and his boyfriend totally RPed Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander shipped that hard. (It’s possible that this story is apocryphal, but that would just mean that ancient historians were writing RPS about Alexander and Hephaestion RPing Iliad slash and honestly that’s just as good).
And then there’s this gem from Plato:
“Very different was the reward of the true love of Achilles towards his lover Patroclus – his lover and not his love (the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish error into which Aeschylus has fallen, for Achilles was surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the other heroes; and, as Homer informs us, he was still beardless, and younger far)” – Symposium
That’s right: 4th Century BCE arguments about who topped. Nihil novi sub sole my friends.
More on this glorious subject from people who know way more than I do
Man I love this post.
And to add my personal favourite story: after reading Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa in the 18th century, Elizabeth Echlin decided that she was NOT HAPPY with the ending and basically wrote her own fix-it fic. No-one dies and Lovelace (the villain) was totally reformed and became a super nice guy. It’s completely OOC and incredibly poorly written and it’s beautiful.
Also, so many women fell in love with the villain, Lovelace, and wrote to Richardson about it, that he kept adding new bits with each edition to highlight what a hideous person Lovelace was. So it’s almost unsurprising that reading novels in this period was actually considered dangerous because it gave women unrealistic ideas about men and made them easier prey for rakes.
Basically, “I want my own Christian Grey” has been a thing for hundreds of years.
Also a thing with fix-it/everyone lives AUs: at various points in time but especially in the mid 1800s-early 1900s (aka roughly Victorian though there were periods of this earlier as well) a huge thing was to “fix” Shakespeare (as well as most theater/novels) to be in line with current morality. Good characters live, bad characters are terribly punished – but not, you know, grusomely, because what would the ladies think? So you have like, productions of King Lear where Cordelia lives and so do Regan and Goneril, but they’re VERY SORRY.
Aka all your problematic faves are redeemed and Everyone Lives! AUs for every protag.
Slightly tangential but I wanted to add my own favorite account of Chinese fandom to this~ I don’t know how many people here have heard of the Chinese novel A Dream of Red Mansions (红楼梦), but it is, arguably, the most famous Chinese novel ever written (There are four Chinese novel classics and A Dream of Red Mansions is considered the top of that list). It was written during the Qing dynasty by 曹雪芹, but became a banned book due to its critique of societal institutions and pro-democracy themes. As a result, the original ending of the book was lost and only the first 80 chapters remained. There are quite a few versions of how the current ending of the book came to be, but one of them is basically about how He Shen, one of Emperor Qian Long’s most powerful advisers, was such a super-fan of the book, he hired two writers to archive and reform the novel from the few remaining manuscripts there were. In order to convince the Emperor to remove the ban on the book, he had the writers essentially write a fanfiction ending to the book that would mitigate the anti-establishment themes. However, He Shen thought that the first version of the ending was too tragic (even though the whole book is basically a tragedy) so he had the writers go back and write a happier ending for him (the current final 40 chapters). He then presented the book to the Emperor and successfully convinced him to remove the ban on the book.
According to incomplete estimates, A Dream of Red Mansions spawned over 20 spin offs, retellings, and alternate versions (in the form of operas, plays, etc.) during the Qing Dynasty alone.
In 1979, fans (albeit academic ones) started publishing a bi-monthly journal dedicated to analysis (read: meta) on A Dream of Red Mansions. In fact, the novel’s fandom is so vast and qualified and rooted in academics of Chinese literature that there is an entire field of study (beginning in the Qing dynasty) of just this one novel, called 红学. Think of it as Shakespearean studies, but only on one play. This field of study has schools of thought and specific specializations (as in: Psych analyses, Economics analyses, Historical analyses, etc.) that span pretty much every academic field anyone can think of.
(That being said, I’ve read A Dream of Red Mansions and can honestly say that I’ve never read its peer in either English or Chinese. If for nothing else, read it because you would never otherwise believe that a man from the Qing dynasty could write such a heart-breakingly feminist novel with such a diverse cast of female characters given all the bitching and moaning we hear from male content-creators nowadays)
the beauty of archival research *sigh*
Don’t even get me started on the Don Quixote fandom. Long story short, the first volume was published 10 years before the second. What do you think happened between those years? There was fanfic. Duh.
I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that there was a little more out there than we’re aware of, but one unofficial sequel pissed off Cervantes so much that it probably prompted him to write his own. At the very least, he spends a couple of chapters in volume two blasting the author. It’s so meta. Especially since that sequel was written under a screename pseudonym and no one knows who was really behind it.
I want you to write more on this topic plz.
I’m so glad someone wrote about Dream of Red Mansions / Story of the Stone because if they didn’t, I would.
For the record, those last forty chapters, essentially one of the most famous fanfics ever written, was only “decanonized” by the Chinese government in the past few years, leaving the book tragically, if accurately, incomplete. (The story I heard about their history was very different than the above post, but they exist one way or another so I’m not going to complain.)
The shipping for that book was absurd, too. The editor of my copy talks about records of men duelling on the street over their OTPs.
WHY DID A GROUP OF WHITE MEN WRITE LAWS FOR PEOPLE THAT WOULD BE BORN HUNDREDS OF YEARS LATER WHY ARENT WE ALOUD TO CHANGE AND REVISIT THE CONSITUTION AS TIME CHANGES SHIT THATS FROM 300 YEARS AGO DONT APPLY TO TODAY THE FUCK
The reason for this, he said, was that he feared that Americans would not view themselves as stakeholders in the foundation document of US law, and therefore become divorced from the idea of their own self-governance, and that politicians from the President down would become ‘like wolves’.
it’s sort of funny that the current cultural idea of the flapper dates not from the 1920s, but the 1950s when costume designers took the radical, gender-fluid, sexual, sexually liberated ideas and fashions of the 20s and made them sexy. as in sexual objectifying.
because 1950s and fuck female agency.
If you would like, I would love to hear more about this. What, exactly, happened, and what was the true 1920s aesthetic, untainted by 50s views?
hokay. so it’s the 1950s and it’s the heyday of the studio system and writers and movie makers (and audiences) want rom coms and frolicking films and lighthearted fun, but there’s just one problem.
WWII
but that was the 1940s! you say
you’re right.
but in order to set a film in the 1950s, writers and film makers have to establish what the male lead character did during the war or risk it coming across like he didn’t, well, serve. can’t have a shirker or a coward and rejected for medical reasons really doesn’t fly in the 1950s. and there’s only so many times you can write about soldiers and sailors and airmen and the occasional spy before it starts to become stale. and it doesn’t terribly fit with the fluffy writing because, well, war and death and tens of millions of people dead. contemporary films more fall in the line of what we now call film noir. men and women who have been damaged by war, but that’s another topic.
sooooo, you do period pieces. no one wants to do the 1930s because that’s the great depression. so 1920s. frolicking and gay and fabulous!
(Great War, what Great War?)
but the thing is, the 1920s, especially in Paris and Berlin, were a massively transgressive, reversal, and experimental time period in art, fashion, society, and all over. but only a little bit in america because honestly we were barely touched by wwi so it’s not like we’re partying to forget an entire generation of young men killed off and entire towns wiped off the face of the earth using weapons the likes of which had never been seen before. the us as a whole mostly heard about sarin gas, not see it poison entire landscapes and men and animals dropped to the ground and die in truly horrific ways.
the europe that emerged from wwi was massively shell shocked, angry, and living in a surreal dream of everything being upwards and backwards and live now because tomorrow you may die and it’s all nonsense anyway. it’s a world in which surrealism and dadaism and german expressionism make sense because fuck it all.
you get repudiation of the old, experimentation, deliberate reversals, transgressive behavior, and if there’s an envelope to push, you tear it open. France calls the 1920s “Années folles”, the crazy years.
the things we’re doing now, with fluidity and experimentation and exploration of gender and sexuality and presentation? the 1920s did that already. it’s drag and androgyny and blatant homosexuality. it’s extramarital affairs and sex before or without marriage, it’s rejection of marriage as an idea and an institution, it’s playing with gender and gender roles and working women and unrestrained art and
it’s everything the 1950s hated. or more accurately: absolutely terrified of.
the flappers of the 1920s went to college and cut their hair to repudiate a century of a woman’s hair being her crowning glory. they wore obvious makeup and makeup in ways that are not terribly appealing now and weren’t terribly appealing then, but they signaled you were part of the tribe.
they were women who wanted independence and personal fulfillment.
“She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.“
so the 1950s didn’t want that. they wanted films with dancing and chorus lines and pretty girls to be looked at. they wanted spaghetti straps and fringed dresses that moved pretty when the chorus girls danced.
1920s fringe doesn’t. 1920s fringe is made of silk, incredibly dense, incredibly heavy, sewn on individually by hand, and rather delicate. the all-over fringe dress didn’t exist until the 1950s invention of nylon and continuous loops that could be sewn on in costume workshops by the mile on machines.
(this is before “vintage” exists. to the 1950s, the 1920s (or earlier) wasn’t vintage, it was old-fashioned. démodé. out of style. last last last last last season.)
1950s 1920s-set movies have clothes that are the 1950s take on it. the dresses have a dropped waist, but they’re form-fitting, figure-revealing. the actresses are pretty clearly wearing bras and 50s girdles under them a lot of the time. they’re not
the woman on the far left is basically wearing a man’s suit with a skirt. la garçonne. some women went full-out and wore pants. you could be arrested for that. they were. still wore pants. and pyjama ensembles in silk and loud prints.
or class photo of ‘25
or even
not that 1920s dresses could be sexy or sexual; they often were. i’ve seen 20s dresses that were basically sideless and held together with straps. but it’s sort of like how the mini skirt went from being a thing of sexual liberation to an item of sexual objectification.
it’s ownership and it’s agency and it’s hard to put a name or finger on it, but you just know. sex goddess versus sex icon.
there’s something really satisfying about the fact that sir arthur conan doyle was the most gullible motherfucker on the planet
sir arthur conan doyle: here is my oc, he is a super genius who solves all the mysteries using the power of deductive reasoning
also sir arthur conan doyle: i have deduced that these fairies are real as shit
sir arthur conan doyle: there’s only one way to determine if these fairies are real… i will give you girls these cameras, that i bought myself, and then i will develop the photos, so i know they haven’t been tampered with
some girls who took selfies in the woods with paper cutouts on hatpins: that seems reasonable
harry houdini, after showing his good friend how he got trickedby a con artist: so as you can see, anyone can make it seem as if they can talk to ghosts
sir arthur conan doyle: harry… i can’t believe you never told me you can talk to ghosts, for real, using actual magic
Doyle and Houdini’s relationship is the funniest thing in the entire history of the skepticism movement
Doyle was SO CONVINCED that Houdini had legit magic powers and could turn into smoke or some shit to escape things and Houdini was like “no seriously it’s a trick let me show you how it works” and Doyle was all “it hurts me that you won’t trust me with this secret”
If memory serves he eventually decided that Houdini was subconsciously magic and in denial
I went looking for more info on this and it’s all true?? Doyle 100 percent believed Houdini was Magic:
backup from Tumblr 