time-to-spleen:

Headcanon that Tony Stark sometimes supply teaches tech/shop classes at local high schools for free when budget is tight, or to just give the teachers a break. He shows up and the kids lose it for a little bit, but then they settle down and listen. It gives them hope, because everyone always trashes the trades and people who work them, but this genius, billionare, playboy, philanthropist took time to teach them this class. He knows trades, and he thinks they’re worth something. He thinks these kids are worth something.

swanjolras:

okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and

i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.

so many people on tumblr were born in the ‘90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.

it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives– for so many of us, the first books we ever loved

the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.

it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.