(via academicfeminist)
akaltynarchitectonica asked: any thoughts on elf sexuality?
ONLY ALL OF THEM
The interested reader should consult What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex, the most extensive guide to elf sexuality I’m aware of. Also, be aware that I haven’t read Silm and anything in here contradicted by Silm is a result of ignorance.
The bits I find interesting are that (1) elf marriage is defined as being sex— the party is considered a good idea, but strictly optional, (2) elves don’t commit adultery and (3) elves can apparently tell from the way someone moves whether they’re wed or unwed. Now, this may just be that elves are Good Catholics, but are you kidding, there is an opportunity for my favorite tropes. I propose: elf hypermonogamy!
(I actually totally thought elf hypermonogamy was canon until I was researching my answer for this ask. GODDAMMIT TOLKIEN.)
Elves are universally demisexual: they literally do not experience sexual attraction to people they aren’t in romantic love with. Elves are only capable of being in love with one person at once. It takes them a long time to get over love; it’s quite common for a rejected elf to never fall in love again, and most of those who do go centuries before they do.
So, how does that affect my favorite ships?
I feel like Legolas/Gimli is super-more-awesome if Legolas was literally never sexually attracted to anyone before Gimli and has no idea what this emotion is. So he is all like OH GOD THIS DWARF IS SO ANNOYING >:( >:( >:( I JUST WANT TO THINK ABOUT HIM ALL THE TIME. BECAUSE HE’S ANNOYING. I WONDER WHAT HIS HAIR FEELS LIKE. And eventually this gets to the point where even Mr. They’re Taking The Hobbits To Isengard starts wondering if something’s up.
and then at Lothlorien he seeks the advice of Galadriel and Galadriel is like “Legolas, you’re in love” and Legolas is like “???!???!!!!!!”
and Galadriel thinks to herself “JESUS CHRIST, Legolas, Luthien and Arwen are one thing, human boys are sort of cute, but DID YOU REALLY JUST FALL FOR, OF ALL PEOPLE, A FUCKING DWARF”
(and then Gimli does the hair thing and she’s like “well, at least he has good taste”)
and then Legolas ends up having sex with Gimli. Now, dwarves totally have a culture of warrior homosexuality. (Also: everything homosexuality????) So Gimli is all like “ah, yes, manly men blowing off some steam in a manly way after battle, this surely does not mean Feelings” and Legolas is like “:( :( :( I will go stare at a river and write love poetry in Quenya more beautiful than the hearts of Men can bear” but he totally doesn’t let Gimli know because he doesn’t want to Pressure Gimli Into A Relationship and also because he will Take What He Can Get
and then at some point Aragorn is sadly singing to himself about Luthien as is his third-favorite hobby (behind beard growth and still not being king) and Gimli is like “why the hell would she give up her immortality anyway, dude, it’s fucking immortality? why can’t she marry an elf instead” and with one thing and another Aragorn ended up telling him about the Elvish Facts of Life
and then Gimli storms up to Legolas and is like YOU KNOW USUALLY I LIKE TO BE INFORMED WHEN I’M MARRIED TO PEOPLE
and Legolas is like “…I’m… married to you but you’re not married to me?”
and Gimli is like I DON’T KNOW WHAT NANCY SHIT YOU PONCY MOTHERFUCKERS GET UP TO BUT AMONG DWARVES MARRIAGE IS USUALLY CONSIDERED A TRANSITIVE PROPERTY
and Legolas was like “I am sorry, I understand if you will never speak to me again” and he is mentally drafting, like, the world’s saddest poem, like, it will win the Saddest Poem contest Elrond holds every year
and Gimli is like YOU FUCKING MORON OF COURSE I WANT TO BE MARRIED TO YOU HOW ELSE CAN I GET TO SHOW YOU ALL THE PRETTY CAVES
and Legolas is like “oh. Oh!”
and then he ends up smuggling his boyfriend into Valinor, I assume by just sort of shoving him into the luggage. “Dwarf? What dwarf? I don’t have a dwarf. What, no, my bag isn’t wriggling, you’re seeing things. Gosh, there are weird sounds on the sea, that one sounded almost like the word ‘fuck’.”
also I feel like this whole thing makes Elrond and Arwen infinitely more amusing
Elrond: NO YOU ARE NOT GOING TO MARRY ARAGORN
Arwen: GRANDMA DID
Elrond: AND LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HER
Arwen: I DON’T CARE I LOVE HIM
Elrond: THERE ARE LOTS OF NICE BOYS IN VALINOR, I’M SURE YOU’LL FIND SOMEONE ELSE
Arwen: NO I WON’T
Elrond: …fuck. You’re right.
Arwen: (looks smug)
Elrond: you know Elros really had the right idea, immortality is awesome but at least HUMANS HAVE THE CONCEPT OF SERIAL MONOGAMYThis is full of win and awesome, and I would also like to point out that if this appeals to you and you aren’t reading @determamfidd‘s Sansûkh, then do yourself a favor and go read it. Right now. Seriously. Drop everything else.
*blushy blushy* ahhh thank you so very much! You are super kind!
IS YOUR URL A ‘THE DARK IS RISING’ REFERENCE BC HOLY SHIT I LOVED THOSE BOOKS
[video]
You can’t love someone’s mental illness away.
A little louder for those exhausting themselves every day
!!!!!!!!
(via lupinatic)
(Source: maybethistimemegz, via im-lost-but-not-gone)
thank you for this.
“PLEASE come wake me up again tomorrow”…think of all the lives this app could save
I’ve got this app and seriously it really helps. Not only do you have a calendar to record medication and feelings but you also want to wake up every morning to help the animal. It pretty much made my life better.
SO GUYS. Reblogging from myself because I just downloaded the app and it’s got some really useful features.
In the Settings section, there is a list of Helpful Websites for a variety of different mental health issues. The list is short, but it is a great idea.
The app has you input information (which you can choose not to share) like your local emergency number, local hospital, and an emergency contact person.
There are plenty of activities to keep you going in the right direction.
There is a calendar function and a medication reminder if you need one– and if you have an “as needed” medication, the app can remind you to take them if you check in in “Crisis” mode.
You can edit or change your information at any time, including your symptoms.
Also, less useful but really cute, you can dress up your animal buddy as you do more activities.
TL;DR This app is adorable and will probably be really, really useful for a lot of people.
BoosterBuddy!
I just downloaded this app this morning and it’s A M A Z I N G. I’m not overstating. This app combines some of the best elements and methods from all the various apps I’ve tried.
The two features that I haven’t seen elsewhere in mental health apps that I especially love are:
- It lets you choose a cute animal friend as a companion to keep you socially motivated. To “wake up” and play with this friend, you need to complete 3 wellness tasks (that are super simple and easy), once you’ve done your daily checkin tasks, the cute animal wakes up to play with you. You can tickle it, talk to it, and even play dress up!! Much more motivating than apps that try to make you feel connected to real people, IMO.
- It includes a “calendar” feature (not a big overwhelming calendar like a normal app) that lets you add your own tasks to your daily checklist. So now, along with “checked in,” “completed quests,” and “take medication” I have an extra task that’s alerting me to the fact that I have an important phone call coming up. It made me describe this as “appointment”: “An appointment means someone is counting on you to be somewhere.” I think that might be the most motivating description of an appointment ever. As an anxious person who tends to cancel and reschedule everything, this app is already making me feel better.
A+++++++++ plz download now guys
This app is amazing! I just noticed it said “people who menstruate,” so it is inclusive of trans people. Great attention to detail.
(Source: bpdprincesa, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
[video]
oh yeah and i can’t believe it’s taken me this long to bring this up but i’m absolutely not here for people shading the “american girl today”/”my american girl” line because
- the line literally enables girls to create a doll that looks like them
- including a wide array of non-white skin tones and non-european features
- like black dolls with curly and textured hair
- or asian dolls that appear to have epicanthic folds
- and they’ve also released accessories like doll-sized wheelchairs, hearing aids, and crutches so that girls who aren’t able-bodied or are hard of hearing can have a little friend who shares their experiences
- and they’ve even begun to offer dolls without hair for little girls who have alopecia or have lost hair while battling cancer
- and basically if you don’t think that’s the tightest shit then get out of my face
Also: SERVICE DOGS.
IT’S SO CUTE IT EVEN HAS TRAINING TREATS. You go American Girl.
They also consulted the Nez Pierce when making their Kaya doll and that’s why her smile doesn’t show teeth, among other things, and they’ve released some beautiful, and accurate, modern Powwow regalia for her.
Also they’ve been offering all this stuff since I was still getting the catalog. I just turned 29, so if I’m going to guess, that means they’ve been offering these options since at least 1996ish.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
imagining rey bringing gifts back from her ‘find luke’ trip for finn really warms my heart
Rey trying to think of how she’s gonna present it to him, like,
“Finn, no big deal but I found this rock and it was so beautiful and it gave me a warm feeling that made me think of you, so… too strong. That’s way too strong.
Um… Finn, this stone symbolizes constancy through adversity and love in spite of… Still too strong, ohhhh why is this so HARD…”
In the end she flings the gemstone into his lap.
“Got you a rock.” She says.
Finn LOVES it.
(via punkrockpatroclus)
is “chai” a TYPE of tea??! bc in Hindi/Urdu, the word chai just means tea
its like spicy cinnamon tea instead of bland gross black tea
I think the chai that me and all other Muslims that I know drink is just black tea
i mean i always thought chai was just another word for tea?? in russian chai is tea
why don’t white people just say tea
do they mean it’s that spicy cinnamon tea
why don’t they just call it “spicy cinnamon tea”
the spicy cinnamon one is actually masala chai specifically so like
there’s literally no reason to just say chai or chai
They don’t know better. To them “chai tea” IS that specific kind of like, creamy cinnamony tea. They think “chai” is an adjective describing “tea”.
What English sometimes does when it encounters words in other languages that it already has a word for is to use that word to refer to a specific type of that thing. It’s like distinguishing between what English speakers consider the prototype of the word in English from what we consider non-prototypical.
(Sidenote: prototype theory means that people think of the most prototypical instances of a thing before they think of weirder types. For example: list four kinds of birds to yourself right now. You probably started with local songbirds, which for me is robins, blue birds, cardinals, starlings. If I had you list three more, you might say pigeons or eagles or falcons. It would probably take you a while to get to penguins and emus and ducks, even though those are all birds too. A duck or a penguin, however, is not a prototypical bird.)
“Chai” means tea in Hindi-Urdu, but “chai tea” in English means “tea prepared like masala chai” because it’s useful to have a word to distinguish “the kind of tea we make here” from “the kind of tea they make somewhere else”.
“Naan” may mean bread, but “naan bread” means specifically “bread prepared like this” because it’s useful to have a word to distinguish between “bread made how we make it” and “bread how other people make it”.
We also sometimes say “liege lord” when talking about feudal homage, even though “liege” is just “lord” in French, or “flower blossom” to describe the part of the flower that opens, even though when “flower” was borrowed from French it meant the same thing as blossom.
We also do this with place names: “brea” means tar in Spanish, but when we came across a place where Spanish-speakers were like “there’s tar here”, we took that and said “Okay, here’s the La Brea tar pits”.
Or “Sahara”. Sahara already meant “giant desert,” but we call it the Sahara desert to distinguish it from other giant deserts, like the Gobi desert (Gobi also means desert btw).
Languages tend to use a lot of repetition to make sure that things are clear. English says “John walks”, and the -s on walks means “one person is doing this” even though we know “John” is one person. Spanish puts tense markers on every instance of a verb in a sentence, even when it’s abundantly clear that they all have the same tense (”ayer [yo] caminé por el parque y jugué tenis” even though “ayer” means yesterday and “yo” means I and the -é means “I in the past”). English apparently also likes to use semantic repetition, so that people know that “chai” is a type of tea and “naan” is a type of bread and “Sahara” is a desert. (I could also totally see someone labeling something, for instance, pan dulce sweetbread, even though “pan dulce” means “sweet bread”.)
Also, specifically with the chai/tea thing, many languages either use the Malay root and end up with a word that sounds like “tea” (like té in Spanish), or they use the Mandarin root and end up with a word that sounds like “chai” (like cha in Portuguese).
Every language does this! It’s called semantic narrowing (the process is, anyway). Here’s a post where @linguisten explained it. :)
(Source: officialflowergirl, via allgreymatters)
