Ever since the last Jedi trailer came out, I’ve been trying to think of Deep Good Meta to contribute to the Star Wars fandom but literally all I’ve got is:
Rey standing out in the rain. Luke asks her what she’s thinking. Rey closes her eyes. “I am going to have sex with my boyfriend in the rain,” she announces.
“Oh,” says Luke, who was maybe expecting something about feeling the flow of the Force, but he’s adaptable. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“I’m going to go ask Finn to be my boyfriend and then we are going to have sex in the rain.”
Luke nods. “A sound plan.”
Personality wise, Rey has perhaps one of the firmest chins he has ever seen, second only to his sister which is a thought Luke promptly pivots away with a Jedi master’s aptitude for resolutely not thinking about things and calling it meditation.
Rey raises her firm chin yet higher. “We’re going to do all the sex things in the rain.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Luke says with complete honesty. He’s happy for Finn as well, if a little concerned he should give the boy a head’s up. Rey grins at him. Luke doesn’t grin back but mostly because he’s still trying to be stern as a teaching technique so he doesn’t get attached.
He’s aware, by the way, that he’s failing.
Pushing that thought aside (he’s very good at that these days–it’s a very quiet island, it doesn’t offer much options for hobbies besides ignoring thoughts and brooding on them and occasionally fishing), Luke asks, “You do know what you need to know?”
“What, like how to do it?” Rey asks. She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Of course. Sort of. I’ve done it before, loads of times.” There’s a very thoughtful pause. “There weren’t many humans in Jakku,” she says, a little worry slipping into her voice. She furrows her brow. “But I figure humans, you know, other humans–it’s basically the same but with only the four limbs. Less slime. And no scales?” Luke gets the impression she didn’t mean that last part to be a question.
And because she’s a student, a young student, his only young student and fellow human on this island whose population has suddenly skyrocketed to four, he does not say what he’d say to a friend and peer, which is, “honey you can’t make assumptions like that, you would not BELIEVE what people with dicks have done to modify them.” Instead, because he’s a mature teacher who is frantically relearning how to be that to the hungriest student he has ever met, Luke says, “I can’t vouch for Finn’s situation. But I’m sure you’ll have a very good time.” After Luke discreetly passes her a few anatomical drawings, just to be on the safe side.
Okay so I see that Immortal Diana and Continuously Reincarnated Steve post you reblogged but if that were the case, she would have to watch him die every time.
*steeples my fingers and looks at you seriously*
Dearest darling heart, I think you have sorely mistaken my interest in this AU.
I live for the narrative of the immortal godlike being and the ongoing eternal tragedy of the deaths of their reincarnated beloved. Like, yes, I want a lot of really cute scenes of Diana curled up in bed with a dozen different incarnations of Steve. But what I really want is for her to find him in war after war (she doesn’t know if he’s drawn to her–she fights like breathing, she can’t give it up any more than she can cut her heart out of her chest–or if he’s drawn to the fight–he tried doing nothing, she remembers him telling her that) and sit at different veteran’s gravestones in each generation and fucking ache for him.
Like, yes, this is terrible. I am interested in the terribleness. I am interested in Diana who sees a golden head among the civilians as she bursts in to save Clark and Bruce’s asses–a man dressed in plain clothing who’s trying to hurry other away in front of him–and feels her heart stutter and decides that this, this will be the time they live happily together.
It’s an honest decision, at the moment she makes it. It always is, the first time she sees him.
I know it’s illegal but whenever I get antibiotics from the doctor I save a few and give them to friends or coworkers who don’t have insurance so that when cold season comes they might be able to shorten their illness
That is not good- that’s not quite how antibiotics work.
Antibiotics kill some bacteria, but don’t manage to kill other bacteria. Just like when you get a particular sickness (or a vaccination), your body can protect you from future infections, any bacteria that came into contact with the antibiotic is protected from future doses of that antibiotic. Bacteria are very virulent breeders, so they spawn more resistant bacteria.
If you take the full dose of antibiotics, your natural antibodies can deal with the cells that are resistant while the medicine kills off the bacteria that isn’t resistant. If you don’t take the full course of antibiotics, then your body has to deal with both the resistant and the non-resistant strains of bacteria, and it can become overwhelming. Also, most bacteria are able to pass on genes between still-living cells, so that previously non-resistant strains become resistant, and you have inadvertently cultivated a stronger strain of bacteria.
Furthermore, colds and the flu are viral infections, so antibiotics don’t work against them anyway. The best protection against viral infections are vaccinations, as there are not many viruses that we have developed anti-viral medication against, once you already have the disease. If there are anti-viral medications, it is even more important that you take the full dose of the medication, because anti-viral medication is even harsher against the body than antibacterial medication is.
To put it shortly: antibiotics don’t do shit for the cold. You need to take the entire bottle that is prescribed to you. People not doing that is how antibiotic resistant infections crop up. People like OP are literally why diseases like MRSA exist.
OP shouldn’t feel bad about good intentions but this is really dangerous. There’s also the risk that your friends are allergic to the specific type of antibiotics you give them.
things that a better-off person can do for their sick less-well-off friends that don’t involve breeding superbacteria through misue of antibiotics:
Buy them cold medicine
Buy them cough drops
Buy them fancy tissues with lotion
Make them too much soup to eat in one go and freeze half for later
Find them a low-cost clinic and accompany them there
Tell them you are giving them their day’s wages and they are staying home Friday/Monday and then do.
Go to their house. Wash the dishes, take out the garbage, walk the dog, scoop the cat or just plain change the whole litter box, clean the bathtub and mom voice them until they take a hot shower or steam their head.
if they have asthma or bronchitis and are out of inhaler but you have a half-full one, that is a thing you can sanitize and share.
ditto palliative prescription medication like “I have half a bottle of lidocaine gargle, you want it?” “I am bringing you the rest of my Robitussin with codeine” “here harvest some ibuprofen from my giant bottle of 1,000 ibuprofen”
I feel like some of this should have been covered in high school health class. It would do a lot to combat misuse of antibiotics. Superbacteria is really dangerous for everyone but is particularly bad for people with multiple antibiotic allergies and will lead to hospital stays for IV antibiotics of kinds they can take.
It’s really, really important to know how antibiotics work. I taught university students in an intro biology lab for two years and one of the things I really tried to emphasize was how antibiotics and antibiotic resistance works. To stress the importance I asked some variant of “how do antibiotics work” on three weekly quizzes in a row and I was still getting wrong answers at the end! Though, far fewer, thankfully.
Also, I would recommend against antibiotic soaps and whatnot, for similar reasons. Use alcohol or hand sanitizer if you want to kill bacteria. I can’t imagine there’s any bacterium in existence that’s still vulnerable to the antibiotics in those products, but just in case!
But, btw, I would like to point out that the VAST majority of antibiotic misuse is agricultural, when large factory farms pre-medicate their cattle with large and constant doses of antibiotics. The USA is particularly guilty of this, especially as it allows big ag companies to keep animals in much more crowded and unhealthy conditions than they could get away with otherwise.
Never use antibiotics for a simple cold. To much use of antibiotic can lead to the creation of resistant bacteria, and you really don’t want that when you have more serious infection.
This is the stuff they should be teaching in science classes as well as health class… Not (just) condoms the periodic table…
Um. Please make sure you and your friend have the same concentration and type of inhaler medicine before loaning one to a friend. That’s incredibly dangerous because if it’s not the same kind you could literally poison them or trigger an asthma attack. Please don’t. It’s arguably more dangerous than not taking all the antibiotics because it is powerful medication that should not be taken lightly like have you seen the giant side effect warning packet?
1st letter of my name:
2nd letter of my name:
1st letter of my mom’s name:
2nd letter of my mom’s name:
1st letter of my dad’s name:
2nd letter of my dad’s name:
My child’s name would be…
my name is naomi
my mum’s name is ruth
my dad’s name is tom
MY CHILD WOULD BE CALLED FUCKING NARUTO
Lasune. Not bad.
…So i have a friend whose name is Valerie. Her mom is Gillian. and her dad is Nathan.
so I really love your writing, and I'm invested in your longer WIPs, but please don't feel guilty for writing shorter works instead! Inspiration is a fickle thing, and anything you wind up publishing is a treat to read!
*tackles with a hug*
THANK YOU SO MUCH. Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m really invested in my longer WIPs too, but inspiration is a fickle bitch and motivation is even WORSE and I am just not hitting the right balance of the two for some reason?
IDK man I’m working on it. Thank you SO MUCH for your patience, you’re a gift.
so on the subject of stolen property, i’ve seen various arguments on this point but it is in fact true that inheriting something from a relative, when you know full well that it was stolen, does not make it yours.
this clearly goes doubly so for powerful magical artifacts, and especially for artifacts which are strongly implied to contain part of their creator’s soul!
you can talk about consequences - maybe the artifact in question has benefits for you, maybe you’re not convinced its rightful owners would use it responsibly - but talking about the consequences doesn’t erase the fact that whatever benefits you think you’re getting are achieved through wrongful means.
which is why i, too, think Frodo should have given the One Ring back to Sauron. thief.
Hahahahaha here comes the law student nerd ready to complicate your wonderful post, op.
(Really this is just pretext for me to study for my property final in a week, so thanks yeah)
Because according to the principles of common property law, the matter of who actually owns title to the One Ring becomes really complicated really fast.
Buckle up babes for the pedantic law lecture no one asked for.
The best part of this is: trust me I guarantee Tolkien knew this much about the Common Law (English mediaevalists end up knowing ridiculous amounts about both Common Law and mediaeval Catholicism whether we want to or not), and indeed if you look at the text, this was relevant to the story.
It’s part of the reason that Sauron is as terrified of Aragorn’s potential claim on the Ring as he is of Gandalf’s or Saruman’s or Galadriel’s - if not more. Because in Middle Earth this shit matters. This is a world where a broken oath will literally bind your unhappy restless soul to the earth in spite of the dictates of the literal creator of the universe (who designated humans as Passing Beyond The World when they die). This is a world where a damn oath is responsible for Everything That’s Wrong With The First And Second Ages.
Oaths, ownership, duties, rights, things owed and owing: this shit matters.
And sure Aragorn is also direct line from Lúthien, but so is Elrond, and so are Elrohir and Elladan. So is Arwen. But what none of them have that Aragorn has? Is a rightful claim to ownership of the Ring.
So much of what Aragorn spends his time in the second and third volumes doing is Establishing Claim - establishing that everything that Isildur owned, he now owns. Why? Because it means he has power that is absolutely needed. “Isildur’s Heir” isn’t a woo-woo floofy-high-concept thing: it’s a literal matter of rights, duties and authority.
When he takes the Palantír from Gandalf and uses it, his companions are aghast, but he reminds them that he has both the right and the strength to use it - and the Right is actually important. Saruman was, face to face, stronger than Aragorn (never doubt that) and Sauron completely pwned him, but Saruman had no right to the Seeing Stone, no more right than Pippin.
But the Palantíri belonged to Aragorn: he’s not only Melian’s ever-so-great-grandchild, he’s also Fingolfin’s ever-so-great-grandchild, and since the Fëonori died out with the poor Ringmaker, the only competition Aragorn could have for ownership of the Stones are Galadriel and Elrond. (And that’s only if you are going right back to the maker-rights, and ignoring the establishment of the Stones as the property of Elros’ line rather later).
It matters. It changes how power works and doesn’t work. Aragorn’s status as the Heir is in fact grounded in these ideas, which play a hugely powerful part (in fact the fight over who rightfully owns the Silmaril Beren and Lúthien brought out of the dark is part of the bloodshed that makes it so that in the end the Silmarils themselves actively reject the last two living sons of Fëanor, negating their claim). Because Aragorn is the rightful inheritor of everything Isildur ever had, he can use the Palantír. Because he is the rightful inheritor of everything Isildur ever had, he can summon the Dead. And because he is the rightful inheritor of everything Isildur ever had, he stands equal to two of the Ainur, to the oldest member of the Trees-blessed Noldorin royal house, and to his own much more powerful (straight up) relatives as a potential claimant of the Ring.
And that is why Sauron is willing to take the chance to catch Aragorn, and (he thinks) ensure his capture, rather than attacking him earlier on when there’s a chance that (even if Aragorn can’t possibly WIN) he could still escape and then bide his time before the next Ring-War and learn to use the damn thing.
But. It’s also important when it comes to Frodo.
Frodo uses the Ring twice, and lays open claim once. Both of the times he uses it are on Sméagol, both times overwheming him and in the second case cursing him (“if you ever touch me again you will be thrown into the fire”). We get both moments from Sam’s POV, where the physical reality of Frodo is replaced by an image of him as a much larger figure, alight from the inside, robed in light, and with a “wheel of fire” at his breastbone.
Frodo does not have any genetics (so to speak) more special than any other hobbit. It’s not like Aragorn vs most humans, where there’s actually a legit difference because most humans were not, at that point, descended from a Maia. Frodo’s just this guy.
The only thing that’s really special about Frodo in terms of the Ring is that, like Aragorn, he’s the other person who has a viable claim. It would, as it were, have to go to the judges to figure out whose claim is better.
And this is why in the moment that he claims the Ring, in the Mountain, Sauron is fucking terrified. It’s why he drops everything else, even the issue of trying to keep his mindless drone-fighters going, even the maintenance of his actual control of weather, of light, of whatever fight he and Gandalf have going, to get his best servants back to the Mountain now now now now.
Because Frodo having an actual rightful claim on the Ring means he can, in fact, use it. Not well, which is why Sauron can paralyse him for that moment it takes for Sméagol to strike (and carry out both Frodo’s demanded oath - “save the Precious from Him” - and his Curse - “if you touch me you will be thrown in the fire” - at once), but he could. This tiny little person is a threat to Sauron, in the heart of his own home, because he has the right to have and use this Ring.
The tricky thing about Tolkien is that whatever his flaws (and he has many), the one thing he’s never unclear of is that the concept of right and might are actually separate. Just because you are strong enough to do or take a thing doesn’t mean you have any right to do it; and just because you aren’t strong enough to enforce your right, doesn’t mean it goes away.
I just wanted to say thank you for your fantastic posts. Every day I look forward to what crazy shit you have to say. Do you think you could tell us any stories about meeting any of the Howling Commandos for the first time?
well, dumdum dougan threw a nazi at me. that’s how we met. it was mid-fight, and i was a little pissed, because i wasnt expecting an angry german to come flying at my face at that particular moment. but we were a little busy trying to stay alive at that point, so mostly i just swore at dumdum and kept fighting.
the rest of them i met in the prison camp. dumdum, gabe, and morita were all technically members of the 107th, but i didn’t really talk to them at all until we were locked up together. falsworth was part of a british parachute brigade who wound up in the same camp as we did, and dernier was part of the french resistance as a spy and explosives expert. we all got tossed in the same cell together because we were the troublemakers of the captured troops. we kept inciting chaos.
which really backfired on them. because by putting all the crazies together, they just made it easier for us to conspire.
so we stole some supplies and blew up a hydra colonel.
they did not like that.
after that we became pretty close. there’s nothing like detonating nazis to bring friends together.
“Behold the brave battalion that stands side by side, too few in number and too proud to hide.”—Caption under a picture of the Animorphs in a history book, probably (via incorrectmorpherquotes)
pristinepastel said: Hey, i know you like the first mummy, but what about the mummy returns?
I HAVE RETURNED…after like a day.
but what the people want, the people get!
RIGHT SO THE MUMMY RETURNS!
aka the only sequel that is 1000% just as good as the first one. like holy shit.
ten years later and we meet our heroes again. rick and evie are happily married, going on adventures, and evie’s dream of becoming a respected scholar has come true and they’ve made a tiny human!
the only unrealistic part being that they only had one kid, i mean they are still all over each other ten years later and you’re telling me they only had ONE kid.
okay. sure jan.
but boy o’ boy is that one kid awesome!
alex o’connell. this kid is literally:
50% evie super-klutz-genius.
50% rick screams-at-things-that-are-illogical-to-scream-at.
50% uncle jonathan’s sheer dumb luck and wit.
10% i’m really bad at math.
you get the point. HE’S GREAT. also the actor passed on harry potter because, JUST LIKE ME, the mummy 1999 was his favorite movie and he just HAD to be in the sequel. alex is just such a smart-ass little shit. that much like his mother, accidentally brings about the apocalypse by opening something he shouldn’t have:
ARDETH BAY TIME LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. he has a much bigger role in this one. GOD BLESS.(because he was supposed to die in the first one, but test audiences loved him as much as we do, so they kept his fine ass around) he still looks prettier than everyone and is still so done with white people once again.
*after almost being killed on he bus* “this was my first bus ride.” *after realizing they’re gonna make him fly again* “why can’t you people ever keep your feet on the ground?”
he’s just such an awesome A+ friend goals, because while he probably needs to go be with other medjai to prepare for battle against anubis’ army (yikes), he stays with the fam to rescue alex. it wasn’t even much of a thought for him really, rick and evie just batted their eyelashes and he was like: *sighs* “these white people are always messing my shit up, but they are my white people.”
rick: he’s still screaming at things. BUT IN DAD MODE. he’s the ultimate dad.
“you, lighten up. you, big trouble. you, get in the car.” *sweetly* “honey, what are you doing, these guys don’t use doors.” “knowing my brother-in-law, he probably deserves whatever you’re about to do to him, but this is my house and i have certain rules about snakes and dismemberment.”
evie: still a super-klutz nerd, but with C O N F I D E N C E. little baby librarian is now a honey badger of ASK ME IF I GIVE A FUCK! and also a re-incarnated princess
“no harm ever came from opening a chest.”
rick: “i swear that kid gets more and more like you every day.” evelyn: “you mean more attractive, sweet and devilishly charming?”
we meet izzy, another one of rick’s ex boyfriends, who is a much more reliable mode of transportation than previously mentioned murder buses.
imhotep: still emo. still wants to make out with his gf.
anck su namun/meela: hella good villain. she bomb af and 100% wants to take over the world. amazing. she actually has like a really cool role this time too!!! like so much screen time.
the rock…i mean the scorpion king, he’s another emo villain with goofy cgi rendering and like 4 million terrible made-for-TV spin off movies that you are lying if you haven’t watched at least one of them and felt that utter disappointment. but who cares the rock is pretty. and this was his first acting role and the reason we have him where he is today.
thank you mummy returns for giving the world actor rock johnson #blessed
normal action movie sequel romance: same guy. different girl. repeat of first movie’s romance. hehehehhehehehhEHEHEHEHHEHH.
not here bitch.
rick and evie’s love has only grown stronger. they still bicker like old ladies at bingo night. the still look at each other like they hung the moon. they’re still disgusting jonathan because they CANNOT KEEP THEIR HANDS TO THEMSELVES. one kid my ass. they still support each other and protect each other like crazy. they love each other so much and it’s so healthy and pure and there is some good in this world mr. frodo.
i will not buy flowers for a girl because flowers are stupid and worthless and they die like really fast. get a girl a rock. rocks are strong. rocks don’t die after 2 days
diamond
the word you’re looking for is diamond
Diamonds are overpriced and far too common. Hand-forge a ring. Etch a script into it. Use it to ensnare the world leaders and take over the world.
There are literally two trilogies telling you why that is a bad idea
when steve trevor says he loves diana there was a cynical part of me that was like “buddy you’ve known her for like five days how are you already in love with her” but then I realised I’d been watching the film for like two hours and I was already in love with her so FAIR PLAY STEVE I get u
A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.
What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.
It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.
Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.
Tru fax.
I had a friend tell me that they really admired me for going “hey, I love you guys, but I need to go sit in a room by myself and read for an hour”. So yes, don’t be afraid of setting your boundaries!
And for people like me, who are very very VERY bad with things like unspoken clues to the fact that someone wants me to do/not do something or whatever? It is such a relief not to have to be constantly worried that I’ll do something that will make them not want to hang out with me anymore.
I’ve lost friends because they never tried to enforce their boundaries and as a result I had no idea I was trampling right over them until they got to a point where they couldn’t handle it anymore, and it is an AWFUL SHITTY FEELING knowing you’ve done that to someone.
Please please please enforce your boundaries with me. I promise I will love you for it.
This is so, so, SO important, people.
I am both bad at enforcing my boundaries and constantly scared of stomping over other peoples. It makes me feel safer if I know you can say No to me. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that others would feel safer if they knew I could say No as well.
Coordinated effort for people to call their Senators on June 14 - Dem or GOP - to protect ACA. In general, I recommend trying local in-state offices before the DC office.
This this this.
Congress has reported that their call level has dropped to pre-election levels: a few dozen scattered calls a day.
Flood those offices. If you’re in a swing state, call to say that blocking the AHCA is important to you, and tell them why. (A sentence or two is fine: “I have a condition that wouldn’t be covered under it,” or “my sister was never able to get insurance before the ACA,” or whatever.)
If you’re in a red state, tell them you’re appalled at your senator’s voting record, and you want them to AT THE LEAST insist on a full committee review and open discussion of the AHCA - especially the costs!
If you’re in a blue state, or your senator is solidly against the AHCA, call to thank them for fighting the good fight.
The one thing I worry about is that they’ll try to push it through before the 14th.
are you an impractical footwear even when it’s incredibly inconvenient gay, a practical footwear even when it’s incredibly inappropriate gay or a clunky boots gay who inhabits both spaces at once
#this is ‘i hate shoes’ gay erasure you’re absolutely right if you are a barefoot gay you are valid
for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’
jerry is here
my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”
When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”
I was done for the day.
This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.
I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”
I did not find my husband in this way.
In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”
“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.
The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)
Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.
I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English.
When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.
“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”
“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”
Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG
My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…
I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.
That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.
Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.
I love those stories so much…
Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.
She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.
American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)
Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)
that’s hilarious
I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY
Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?
So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.
The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”
What the hell Biblical Hebrew.
Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.
^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one.
Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.
Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English. Or French. Or German. Or Italian. (He tried all of them.)
Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years). He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.
She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.
My cousin’s mother tongue is English, but she also speaks Spanish, French, and Arabic so you could say she’s pretty good with languages. She also has an extensive English vocabulary. She spent two years in Peru and spoke nothing but Spanish while she was there. For the first few hours after we picked her up from the airport, she was fine and used her crazy advanced vocabulary like she hadn’t left. But we were eating dinner and she was telling a story and said “There something on the…” she said something in Spanish. We’re like “Sorry Meg we don’t speak Spanish. She huffs and says “You know, the /thing/.” She points down and waves other hand in a flat plane. After her struggling like this for another 30 seconds my uncle is just like “Do you mean the ‘ground’, Meg?” She slammed her hand down on the table “YES!”
on the subject of Humans Are Space Orcs i keep thinking it would be funny if ‘pursuit predator’ humans got together with an ‘ambush predator’ feliform species. and like. humans enjoy walking around with their friends! and the feliforms enjoy huddling in a concealed location with their friends! and it takes all of half an hour for a human to pick up a scarf and make a sling to take their pal with them while they go grab some lunch.
our new friends are like ‘are you sure this isn’t an inconvenience’ and the humans are like ‘are you kidding we do this with terran cats whether they like it or not’
also the team-up of humans and the feliform species gives most herbivore species in the galaxy screaming nightmares because here is a mobile tower that will follow you for 16 hours straight and it’s carrying a bag full of sneaky murder like it’s a baby this is not okay
14: Are they prone to outbursts (of violence, extreme emotion… exc… )?
…shockingly, no. Not even the White Wolf was really prone to losing control of himself. Losing his temper, maybe, but Crispin was raised as a diplomat, with exceptional control over his emotions (this emotional repression may have been a contributor to his eventual snap). He has always been prone to very cold anger–Crispin has always been the type where he can hold onto his temper until the most opportune moment to release it and then flay someone alive with a totally bland expression. Like, is he an incredibly dangerous, violent, impassioned person? Yes, 100%. But those things are always released with the sort of steel-eyed calculating precision to have the maximum impact. Which is somehow more nervewracking when he’s on the ‘right’ side of things.
44: What’s one thing they wish they could do more often, but can’t?
Crispin genuinely really likes children. He’s great with them. He used to hang out at Brenneth’s smithy before everything went to hell and the kids who drifted through (Brenneth didn’t immediately kick them out and told good stories, so she was something of a hit) adored him. The kids used to call the two of them pesaruld Crispin and pelali Brenneth (big brother and big sister). Crispin would love to be able to spend more time with children.
Naturally, absolutely no one trusts him with their children.
Captain America would kick Wonder Woman's ass just sayin
As someone who loves my son Steve Rogers, I have to say that he could never kick Diana’s ass, like literally, and also he would never do that, because Steve Rogers would grow up idolising the mysterious hero from WW1, and would probably swoon if he got to meet her, would call her “ Your Majesty” unironically, until Diana has to literally punch him to make him stop, and even then, he’d call her “Ma'am” with the utmost respect, and also he’d follow her to Hell and back without blinking.
I work at a kindergarten and this is a collection of cute Wonder Woman related things that happened within a week of the movie being released.
On Monday, a boy who was obsessed with Iron Man, told me he had asked his parents for a new Wonder Woman lunchbox.
A little girl said “When I grow up I want to speak hundreds of languages like Diana”
This girl had her parents revamp her Beauty and the Beast birthday party in THREE DAYS because she simply had to have a Wonder Woman party.
Seven girls playing together during recess on Tuesday, saying that since they all wanted to be Wonder Woman they had agreed to be Amazons and not fight but work together to defeat evil.
There is this one girl that refuses to listen to you unless you address her as Wonder Woman.
Another girl very seriously asked the teacher if she could ditch her uniform for the Wonder Woman armor bc she “wanted to be ready if she needed to save the world”. The teacher laughed and said it was okay, and the next day the girl came dressed as Wonder Woman and not a single kid batted an eye.
They are making a wrap-up dance show, and they asked the teacher if they could come as superheroes, they are going to sing a song about bunnies.
This kid got angry and threw a plastic car over his head and a girl gasped “LIKE IN THE MOVIE”
A boy threw his candy wrapping in the floor and a 5-year-old girl screamed “DON’T POLLUTE YOU IDIOT, THAT IS WHY THERE ARE NO MEN IN TEMYSCIRA”
On Wednesday, a girl came with a printed list of every single female superhero and her powers, to avoid any trouble when deciding roles at recess.
I was talking to one of the girls that hadn’t seen the movie, and the next day she came and very seriously told me “you were right, Wonder Woman was way better than Frozen.”
Consider this your friendly reminder that if this movie completely changed the way these girls and boys thought about themselves and the world in a week, imagine what the next generation will achieve if we give them more movies like Wonder Woman.
Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo. Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.
Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else.Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Paulina does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
Okay, so the whole humans are space orcs/earth is space Australia thing has me thinking: what about grooming/pampering?
Like, a lot of us go to spas/salons (or do the cheaper at home versions) to literally get hair ripped from our bodies using a large variety of different methods, to obtain our own personal desired levels of body hair. And we call it pampering. What if humans are the only ones who do that? Aliens that cut/dye hair, comb/style it in totally unique ways to suit themselves, but pull it out completely? What kind of creature tortures itself like that?
And we have so many ways of doing it. Tweezing, waxing, threading, hair removal creams that can burn your skin to name a few.
Plus there are facials that leave your face red and splotchy for hours afterward because they pick at your skin to remove gunk.
Massages, where in order to feel good they have to hurt you to remove the tension from your muscles, so while eventually it feels good, it hurts first.
We twist ourselves into weird positions to paint our toenails because our knees get in the way (not so painful, but reasonably uncomfortable).
We are willing to sit still for obscene amounts of time to get our hair/nails/make up done, even though humans are notoriously fidgety.
So some aliens at first would probably think we’re super vain (and some humans are), but more experienced aliens would be like:
“no, that’s just something the humans enjoy. It’s how they ‘treat themselves.’”
“But, Skrill, she’s literally ripping hair out of her face?”
“It’s how she gets her eyebrows - how did she put it? - ‘on fleek.’ Compliment them, humans are thrilled when you compliment them when they spend a lot of time on face hair removal.”
Brenneth and Crispin 16 if you don't mind. Love your work. :)
Listen I just want you all to know that I expected to get zero (0) asks for this, MAYBE one from a close friend or my mother or something who was trying to humor me. And now I have Many. Like eight all told. I have no idea if this is just one really curious anon or if this story got popular but welcome to my kingdom, you may call me my liege.
16: Is there anyone who makes them feel inferior?
I mean, each other, tbh. And they have understandable reasons for this, which doesn’t help their respective buckets of Problems.
So, Crispin’s reasons for thinking Brenneth is better than him are pretty plain and simple. Crispin knows that he was the villain of their story, and as much as he might hate himself for it, he knows that Brenneth did the right thing. He knows that–regardless of whether he was necessarily compos mentis at the time–he killed a lot of people and attempted a takeover, and Brenneth was the hero who came in to stop him, no matter the cost. Beyond that, Crispin genuinely believes that Brenneth is a hero, talented and clever and stubborn and strong, and even though he has a very accurate grasp of his own skills and abilities, he’s always thought that Brenneth was severely underappreciated by the people around her. This translated into more than one extremely ill-advised attempt to get her to side with him during his stint as the White Wolf.
And like moreover Brenneth won. Brenneth isn’t just the hero, in Crispin’s mind, she’s the victor. Obviously she’s better than him.
Brenneth, on the other hand, has very similarly logical (if…debatable) reasons for her feeling that Crispin is better than her. First of all, she was passed over for the prophecy when they first arrived in Alleirat as kids, and that has an impact–Crispin was fated to be the great hero, according to the people who took them in, and Brenneth still feels some of that imposter syndrome, like she stole his title or cheated him out of it, even though he very much surrendered that right when he started murdering folk. Second of all, flat-out Crispin was better in combat for much of their time fighting each other. Like, it was an objective reality, he had trained as a warrior and a diplomat exclusively while Brenneth was both a blacksmith and a warrior. No level of natural talent (and Brenneth is very talented) can make up for that kind of time devoted to practice. Don’t get me wrong, she did a good job–she poisoned him once or twice, fought to the best of her ability when they clashed, tried to blind him one time–but Crispin was just having more success, better luck. There was even a time where he believed he had successfully managed to kill her (and in his defense, stabbing someone in the chest and burying them alive in an avalanche does seem pretty foolproof). By the end of their four years, the two of them were well-matched, almost perfectly equal in skill, but that time of knowing that Crispin was more competent left its mark. Brenneth believes–erroneously, perhaps, but no one can prove her right or wrong–that if she was as good as Crispin, she would have been able to save him from himself.
