i love seeing professors getting super excited before talking about the only infix in English it’s so funny
#an infix is an affix that happens in the middle of the word#an affix is a prefix or suffix#our only infix is “fucking” lmao#like fan-fucking-tastic#or abso-fucking-lutely#it’s just so funny the profs always get a huge smile#and gets all cheeky
THIS IS SO COOL.
Like I knew that it was a thing, I just didn’t realize it was such a UNIQUE THING.My all-time favorite example is “halle-fucking-lujah!” (Back in the late 80s/90s I thought I was the only person who said it.)
(via littlestartopaz)
Anonymous asked: Ok so that lams reincarnation ficlet is everything I ever wanted and Hamilton's not even a fandom I read fanfics for. Please consider writing whatever happens next (or honestly anything in the AU where almost everyone is reincarnated because that is just such a good AU)
Oh my god, babe, I’m so flattered, I’m so glad you’re liking it. And here! I’ve basically used this as an excuse to bring in my Historical Fave, America’s favorite fighting Frenchman—LAFAYETTE.
As far as Alex is concerned, highlights of Columbia include: orientation week, which lets him get a handle on the new arrangement of the campus, John Laurens, the several gorgeous libraries, the rediscovery of the Schuyler sisters (the blue-green bruise rising from Peggy’s fist notwithstanding), John Laurens, the potential to find more of his old dear friends, the fact that the dorms have both air conditioning and heating, and John Laurens.
Downsides include: his ongoing struggle with Academic Affairs. Honestly, this is his second time through their system and one would think that over two and a half centuries they would have sorted themselves out. But no. He’s not even trying to arrange a two-year program this time, all he wants is permission to take more than the maximum number of credits, he’s not asking for the moon here.
It’s usually done so humans are presented as “average”. In my conception, humans are the daredevils. The one thing a human loves more than watching another human do something horribly unsafe is doing something unsafe themselves.
It’s said that the stout and serious dwarves invented the first staircase, but it was a human who came up with the idea of surfing down the staircase on an oaken shield.
Elves have lived in the great Hometree overlooking the Mother River for untold ages. It was a human who first had the idea to jump out of the tree and into the river.
That’s the other thing - dwarves are stout and hardy, but like the stone they came from, once they break, they’re broken. Humans recover impossibly fast by the standards of other races. They’re also the first ones to get up after an explosion or cave-in, with a cheerful “I’m okay!” They can’t take as much as a dwarf, but nobody beats humans at getting back up again and again and again for more punishment.
The Hobbits appreciate Human vigor, their good cheer, and certainly their lusty appetite for food and drink, but the utter glee with which humans will attempt to harm themselves or their fellows in a misguided attempt at “fun” is horrifying. Their rituals and celebration - they let themselves be charged by bulls! - are seen as a testament to human ingenuity, creativity, and utter lack of good sense.
The humans who are most highly regarded by their peers are those who excel at SOMETHING. Dancing, throwing, singing, fighting - humans love watching other humans be excellent at things, even something otherwise pointless and wasteful, like throwing knitting needles into melons.
They are, to a fault, resilient. No Elves would DARE return to a failed settlement. The land is cursed and the dead walk there. Humans will rebuild the same castle over again with the same standing stones.TL;DR - only humans would invent the X-Games.
Humans are Weird: Fantasy Edition
For a species as naturally short-lived as humans they are remarkably cavalier about potentially dying. They do dangerous things for fun, and when their elven friends ask why they would do such a thing they have been known to shrug and respond “you only live once.”
(“Yes Ivan, that’s the point I’m trying to make here.”)
For the random title fic meme, from @littlestartopaz: Sugar and spice. Miraculous! Fandom
This is obviously the fic where Alya is convinced that her best friend is cheating on her boyfriend who is…also cheating on her? It’s all a little confusing, honestly, there are a lot of people to keep track of in this…love trapezoid, or so she tells Nino when she commandeers recruits him to help figure it out.
There are three problems with her mission to figure out what the hell is going on with Marinette and Adrien. Little problems. Tiny, really. She can barely see them, they’re so small.
First of all, Marinette and Adrien are impossible to keep track of, which means she can’t even get a good picture of the guilty parties caught red-handed. Alya can get around this, okay, she is a skilled journalist, she’ll figure it out even if she has to bug the little bastards. (Nino thinks this is going a bit far, but she did not ask for his opinion, thank you very much.)
Second of all, neither Marinette nor Adrien will even entertain suspicion of each other, which under any other circumstances Alya would consider a good thing. Really! But how are they so dense, she wonders aloud on more than a few occasions to Nino. Hell, they’re always running off without explanations, anyone would be suspicious.
Third of all, and this might be a slightly bigger problem, the other half of this set of guilty couples is pretty high profile.
But how do you just up and accuse the heroes of Paris of cheating with a couple of high school students?
Real Talk Guys
I don’t know how many of you guys that (for some reason) follow me (please don’t leave me tho I love you) also follow @words-writ-in-starlight (if you don’t tho you SHOULD because she is my wife and posts writing and like reblogs content a million times better than mine. Like. Really. If you have stayed with me you should be following her.)
Let me tell you tho. She is EVIL. Her writing, especially her original writing, KILLS ME because wow it is both brilliantly written and she knows how to make you fall in love with a character just to torture them (both literally and figuratively). I just got to read everything she’s written for Polaris and GOD KILL ME I AM IN PAIN. I don’t really know what this post is about other than I’m suffering and you should all convince her to post some of Polaris or ANY more of her original writing so I have people to suffer with. Also, seriously, if you are already a fan of hers and want to have someone to suffer with about her writing HIT ME UP. Just send me a message or something jfc.
Also, my dear wife that I know is reading this, WRITE ME MORE YOU BASTARD I CAN’T BELIEVE WHERE YOU LEFT OFF.
Thank you to whoever got to the bottom of this post. This has been a psa: follow @words-writ-in-starlight, go read everything she has ever touched and posted, then message me so I have someone to suffer with.
(Source: lathori)
I’ve been really preoccupied mentally with this ‘queer is a slur’ thing going around. I’ve seen a lot of ppl explaining the histories behind queer and its reclamation by queer folks, but I wanted to riff a little bit about the reasons, for me, that reclamation makes sense as a reaction in the first place.
When I was a young gay, growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, I remember there being one slur I heard a lot that I don’t really hear anymore. I don’t know if this was just an Alabama thing, but pretty much every gay person I knew had heard or used this word at some point and lots of str8 folks used it too: flamer.
It was short for ‘flamboyant’–used primarily to describe gay men. I cannot even begin to describe to you my loathing for this word. Not only did I just fundamentally think it sounded stupid, I hated that: (1) it was consistently used to gender-police gay men, because of course acting flamboyant was all about not being sufficiently masculine; (2) the idea that to be acceptable queer folks need to hide their queer ways and act like str8s is distasteful; (3) str8 ppl would sometimes mis-define by claiming that it was because “gay people would burn in hell”; (4) gay men used it against each other as much as str8 ppl used it against gay men.
One of my best friends back then was a guy named Josh. Big, cuddly, sweet, I-dare-you-to-no- love-this-guy Josh. There was nothing particularly effete about Josh’s appearance, but he was not remotely interested in the trappings of masculinity; one of his many affectionately given nick-names was “Spirit Sparkles.” Josh often referred to himself as a flamer–he took a lot of pride and pleasure in the term. Sometimes he would introduce himself that way to other gay kids we met. It was a really aggressive stance, because it flipped the tables on anyone who wanted to use the term pejoratively.
What I mean to say is that in a situation where one person called another a flamer as a derogatory term, you’d have to pick the term apart and point out all the things wrong with it: “Hey, you shouldn’t use that word because it implies that there’s something wrong with acting gay and anyway how does someone act gay that doesn’t make any sense, and also it sort of implies that men who have feminine attributes are wrong and that’s gross.” On the other hand, to embrace the term was to signal that everything deemed ‘bad’ by its use as a slur was in fact a source of pride. Moreover, it put the other person in the position of having to say what was wrong with being flamboyant. In this way, this act of reclamation was a Gordian knot solution–rather than untangle the term, reclamation allowed Josh to cut through all the bullshit.
One of the persistent problems with terminology in the queer community is that there are no words for us that haven’t been at one time or another a slur because for an enormous chunk of our history in Western culture the dictionary definition of who we are was itself imbued with negativity. Even the word homosexual was a pathologized medical term for a psychological disorder until 1974. In this context, reclaiming slurs as markers of pride is one of the only courses of action open to us: and, in fact, this is one of the key concepts in Pride parades. They sprung up in the wake of the 1969 Christopher Street Riots as an explicit way of saying to str8 communities: these people you denigrate the most (drag queens, transgender individuals, POC) in the gay community are a source of pride for us. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going anywhere.
My identity is a slur. What I do and what I am are offensive to people. I cannot escape this, but I can embrace it. I can take pride in the very aspects of myself that others find perverse. I can–and I do.
(via windbladess)
Anonymous asked: Ooooh! I'd love to reas that fic when you write it. And the phrase is from a Conrad Aiken poem, jsyk.
THANK YOU SO MUCH, I’m totally going to write it someday. Probably next year when I’m not in school full time. (And also thank you for the source because??? Fuck me, that’s a gorgeous quote.)
Anonymous asked: Hello I just found ur blog and ur writing is beautiful af!!! Pls have these sunflowers!!🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
I??? Thank you so much??? I love my new sunflowers??? You are the sweetest, have a wonderful day!
Anonymous asked: Twisted By Simple Light
Maniacal cackling. This would be/might actually someday be the title of the Fic We Shall Not Speak Of, previously discussed here. I’m literally going to copy-paste because I’m so pleased with that summary.
Padme Naberrie-not-yet-Amidala is three when the Force comes to her, as strong as one of the great storms that close down all of Naboo, four when the Jedi turn her away for being too old, five when she begins teaching the Force to herself.
Surely emotion is not wicked at its core, young Padme says, surely not, and she reaches out, learns to shape the Force with her passions and her loves and her rages and her laughs, and it is warm and rich and wild and vicious and everything (and surely this cannot be the Dark Side).
When she stands on the Tatooine sand and meets a boy who shines like a sun, some part of her mind (the part that’s seen people die because their vaunted politicians took too long to see them suffering, the part that’s seen wars start over petty arguments and diplomatic differences, the part that looks around Tattooine and thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power to save them) says yesssss. And she reaches out and she takes his hand and she stays in touch and she assures him that no, emotion is not wrong, love is not wrong, Attachment is not wrong, he is not wrong.
One day…oh, one day he comes to her, wild-eyed, with the words of another person on his tongue and talk about Sith, and she does her research and she thinks look at all these suffering people, if only I had the power, and…
Well. Padme only wants to help. Surely the ends justify the means. Surely this cannot be Dark, if it’s to save starving children and wounded soldiers and slaves.
And the Empire rises under the command of its Empress and her iron fist, Darth Vader.
sroloc--elbisivni asked: For the fic titles prompt: the word that breathed the world (Librarians? Maybe?)
For the record, I have no idea if this is legitimate and/or refuted by an episode I haven’t seen (desperately, desperately behind), but S T I L L. This fic would be the story of the Library’s favorites through the millennia (she is a library, after all–her favorites are wordsmiths and silver-tongued diplomats, world-changers and storytellers).
The Library is sentient. This is not a commonly known fact–sometimes Librarians go their whole career without even realizing it. She does not particularly mind this.
(Sometimes, in the netherspace where she has a shape that is more woman than building, she meets with others like herself. A waif of a boy, the thirteenth of his kind, whose eyes crackle with purple lightning, tells wild stories of heroics and villany and…goo? A slender willow-wand fae dressed in ragged white and trailing glittering dust in her wake complains of her lovesick king and the mortal girl who defeated him. The boy is young, only centuries old. The willow-wand is ancient, even older than the Library. There are others, but these are the eldest and the youngest, the bookends of their kind.)
The vital thing about a sentient being is that sentient beings have favorites–it’s unavoidable. The Library being rather fickle, not all of her favorites are Librarians.
Galahad is sheltered in her Annex on the merits of his old friends, more so than on his own. Merlin asked, and she loved him, so she did as requested. Merlin isn’t quite like her, but he’s not quite human either, and sometimes, very occasionally, she will sense the touch of a hand on one of her many doors as Merlin passes by.
Greek and Rome were riddled with poets and philosophers–the others like her had varying opinions on them. She was fond of Catullus with his filthy sense of humor, and of Plato with his unusually good grasp of the netherworld, but, oh, Sappho she loved.
Sun Tzu was too warlike to be a Librarian, too much a tactician and not enough of a dreamer, but she would slip him secrets of long-dead armies in his dreams to bolster his writing.
Poe and Shelley and Byron and Keats–she did love the Romantics. They were her favored for years, brilliant comets that burned out so fast. The willow-wand shook her head at the Library for it, remarking on the merits of immortal citizenry.
But William–William was her best beloved, her most cherished mortal favorite. She would be hard-pressed to find someone to stand beside him and his golden words and dirty jokes and impossible wisdom. Not even the willow-wand could hold that against her, her immortal faerie residents drawn to his starlight words like moths to a flame.
(When Prospero first stepped into her walls, she had a moment of blind hope that maybe, somehow, her dear Shakespeare had returned to her.)