the world sorely is in need of bigger and better Glamour Boys

Eva Roemer

if i had to explain what tumblr is like i’d only show this

No one seems to be acknowledging the far funnier element of this, which is, that when you go to the commenter’s account, you find out they are actually fucking roleplaying as a sexually repressed skeleton and jjst really committed to the bit while everyone in the reblogs is talking about how much they hate minors or trying to bring back asexual discourse or whatever. thank you kharak the skeleton servant of the almighty lich king

starbursts, sunrise, and the summer palace 

currently maybe possibly single-handedly crashing whatever servers eton hosts its archived student newspapers on because me and a friend are getting obsessed with a single outspoken prefect from 1883

@queenlua Happily! This is going to be long, so here's some set dressing first:

Eton College, for anyone unfamiliar, is a prestigious boys' school in England that has famously educated MANY MANY politicians, royals, nobility, and other assorted famous people. All you really need to know about it is that's it's incredibly posh and expensive and exclusive

The Eton Society (called “Pop” internally) is a self-selecting body of senior students at Eton that have historically held a decent amount of power at the school. If you’ve ever attended a school with a prefect system/house system etc you probably know a little bit about how obnoxious this kind of group can get. Now imagine they're all called Lord Godfrey Pickerington or something. Are you getting it? Is the set being dressed? Good.

Now that the scene is set, here’s our tale!!

I stumbled into Eton’s archives while doing research for a fanfiction and we’ll just leave that admission where it is!! It was in reading old issues of their student-run paper, The Chronicle, from 1883 that myself and @carebewear started becoming fixated on one guy in particular.

Cecil B. Gedge (from this point on known as Gedge) was a member of the Eton Society in 1883/84. He won a few Science awards during his time there (Biology!!) and seemed to like rowing during school sports events. He went on to become a barrister, which will make sense once you know more about him.

The best part of Gedge, though, is his appearances in the minutes for the Eton Society meetings. At least at Gedge’s time, the Eton Society seemed really fond of staging debates (more like loosely organised discussions) on a wide variety of topics.

Here are some of the riveting questions they discussed!

And my personal favourite: "Are Ghosts Real?"

(They were very divided)

Gedge first came to our attention in debate about the annexation of New Guinea, in which he apparently started an "abusive attack on the British army and missionaries":

Wow! Based Gedge!? He continues to spit period-typical truths about things like how we shouldn't tax bicycles actually because it would disproportionately affect poor people. YIMBY Gedge?? He would've loved light rail.

The final nail in our Gedge obsession was a debate on women's suffrage, in which Gedge vehemently advocates for women's right to vote and then gets no supporters at the end of the meeting. But I appreciate that he said it anyway and kept saying it. He is more persecuted that Christ, to me.

Here are some more, from anti-conscription sentiment to indirectly calling his classmates stupid to weirding everyone out by saying he wants to donate his body to science (his friend dissecting him for fun):

We started getting the feeling people might not have liked Gedge that much, mainly since one of the Society members wrote a poem about all his friends and Gedge isn't in it.

In 1884, there was some extended drama in the Chronicle where someone whom I groundlessly suspect was Gedge under a pseudonym ("A Socialist"), wrote to the editor complaining that the "debates" published by the Eton Society were "bad" (genuine quote) and that they should make a REAL debate society at the school that ALL boys, not just the self-selected seniors, could participate in:

To make a long story short most of the vocal members of the Eton Society threw up their hands at this and refused to do anything, basically boiling down to "Just because we're the prefects of the school doesn't mean we should have to actually DO anything!! Unfair!!" and also this quote which reads exactly like at least a thousand real tweets I've seen in my life

Liberal. Gedge, of course, was there giving practical suggestions, but the discussion was ultimately cut short because their principal died and they had to push a memorial issue of the paper. We have a working theory that the staff might've used that interruption as an opportunity to get the boys to cut it the fuck out.

Anyway it's a little unclear what happens to Gedge after that. He isn't credited as being in the 1884 Eton Society in the larger school register but it's unclear if that's because he wasn't re-elected or if he just graduated. Either way, he went on to become a barrister in London, which makes a lot of sense. Sadly though, he passed away in WW1, which we were really normal about

Thank you Lt. Gedge, for truly embodying the eternal spirit of an outspoken debate-kid, a friend to the lefties, a proto-yimby, a terminal back-talker, and the kid in a biology class that's a little too excited for the dissections. I hope your life, however short, was a rich and bright one. Thanks for the incredibly entertaining afternoon, brother 🫡

a kingdom, or this.

[scrolling through a fandom tag] wrong. wrong. incomprehensibly wrong. wrong but harmless. nice style and color palette but I don't care about that ship. mildly entertaining liveblog update. they whitewashed my girl :( . good joke, reblog. wro--well that's my mutual so I will politely look away. fifteen posts in a row by an innocent rp blog that I don't have the heart to block. take I agree with but op was annoying about it. chapter twenty-eight of a longfic wip. !! GOOD POST !!, instafollowed. bot. technically correctly tagged but uses this acronym for something completely different. museum worthy art piece by a sixteen-year-old from the philippines. wrong. wrong but in a new and exciting way that provokes thought.

Lauren Mercer-Smail (Canadian), Helena from the Alley, Toronto, 2019, Oil on canvas

feel like this is still the best laurent ive drawn idk why i deleted this diva

THESIS STATEMENT: it is imperative that i follow the weird blogs i find on accident.

SURFACE LEVEL REASONING: if my dash gets too curated I lose a core element of tumblr whimsy that can only be obtained by seeing posts i absolutely do not get or particularly care about. this new one i'm following is adamant that Joker from Joker (2019) is Russian Orthodox and i love that for them

DEEPER TRUTH: this too is curation, a chaotic element added in the perfect proportion to enrich my online experience. my dash is the glass between me and a tank of the blogging equivalent of exotic fish, and i enjoy seeing them go about their day-to-day lives. i'm still hung up on Russian Orthodox Joker though

RUSSIAN ORTHODOX JOKER: hehehehoo i'm Russian Orthodox Joker!!!

sketch for the judgement, charcoal on paper, john singer sargent, c. 1903-1916

i m;iss when u could touch a tv and feel its fur

When an old tv died it was always very understandable. Screen busted. Tubes broke. Animal sick. Smart TVs will have psychosomatic problems that clear within a day. Ur Apple TV gets mental illness.

tech used to die a honourable death of Blow Up The Fuck And Burn The House Down. now its all like waahh wahhhh mommy i camnot update :((

CRISS CROSS (1949) dir. Robert Siodmak

king rising 👑

this website is undefeated

louis one direction is a paragon of mental fortitude because all the black mold girlies go to his concerts and throw rainbow flags at him. in the face of his overwhelming heterosexual tracksuit aura . and then in the least homophobic manner possible he has to dodge them matrix-style lest he accidentally implicate himself as harry styles' wife. What must that do to a man