have i ever told y’all about the greatest moment of my academic career
i was a freshman in college and i had this history teacher who was ~edgy~ and his hotness level on ratemyprofessor was off the charts and he was the first teacher i ever heard use the word “fuck.” anyway he would do this thing every so often where we’d have a “quiz” and the first two questions were always really easy and the last one was hard - they were all similar questions, and the point was to show what you learn about history and what you don’t.
so one day he’s like okay kids time for a quiz and the first question was who killed abraham lincoln. the second question was who killed JFK. third question was who killed william mckinley.
we all take a few minutes and write down our answers, and then the teacher asks the questions again so we can shout out the answers. everybody answered the first two with really no problem.
now, keep in mind that this class was at 9 a.m. and i was exhausted All The Time during my freshman year of college so i sat in the back in my sweats and never said a word and the teacher definitely had no clue who i was.
so you can imagine his surprise when he asked the class who shot william mckinley and without missing a beat i said, “czolgosz,” pronounced correctly and everything.
my teacher froze and in a very stern voice asked, “what was that? what did someone just say?”
i repeated: czolgosz.
my teacher: “who said that?”
i raised my hand, and my super cool history teacher glared at me. he then asked me how the hell i knew the answer. he said that in the TWENTY YEARS he’d been teaching this stupid class, nobody, not A SINGLE PERSON, had ever known the answer to that question.
i then had to quietly explain to a room full of people that there’s a musical called assassins and there’s a song about czolgosz shooting william mckinley at the great pan american exposition in buffaloooooooo (in buffaloooooooo)
The arts are important.
I shocked a teacher once because I could recite the preamble to the US Constitution (got bonus points to), She asked why I’d taken it upon myself to memorize it. I had to explain it was in a School House Rock song….
I shocked church with my ‘math skills’ when they were asking how many seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a year, now how about minutes in a year - and I call out five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes without pausing to think, cos Rent
Once aced a religion class pop quiz that asked me to list all of Jacob’s sons since they’re the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. The one and only time I’ve been thankful for Andrew Lloyd Webber. I even got points for getting the birth order correct.
My little brother got extra points in a social studies class once for knowing “O Canada” in its entirely (we’re American and grew up in Maryland, for context) because my older sister went to undergrad in Maine and her acapella group learned the Canadian National Anthem could sing it whenever the hockey teams played Canadian teams.
It’s INSANE to me how controversial romance novels are. Romance novels. Like, being openly a fan of them immediately opens you up to people constantly coming at you like “but don’t you think it’s ~limiting- and ~juvenile~ to have a genre of books with happy endings for women?”
Like.
No?
Why is it such a big deal to want to read stories where women have sex and then don’t die at the end? Jesus Christ.
Why is the concept of female characters being happy seen as less creative than female characters suffering? (Trust me, creating a world where women win in the end takes a lot more creativity and artistic vision lmfao)
Anyway, literary bros will pry my romance novels with their happy endings from my cold dead fingers.
Or die in the very beginning of the book. But no one calls out James Patterson for writing another formulaic thriller in which a woman is horrifically killed after getting laid and then some man solves her murder. Every. Damn. Time.
But hey, those romance novels where women get happy endings are so limiting, eh?
Real talk: realizing how common it is for female characters to be punished for on-the-page sex with death was a big part of my embracing the romance genre. Once I noticed it I couldn’t unnotice it. It’s everywhere. A woman having sex in literature or non-romance genre fiction is the literary equivalent of a red shirt on Star Trek.
It’s not just the sex thing, though that’s a key element. It’s that, in romance novels, the heroine gets to be cared for the way she normally would care for everyone else. It’s wish fulfillment in that her romantic partner will do emotional labor, spend a great deal of time thinking about her, or sacrifice his desires or fortune or reputation to be with her, or spend days nursing her back to health, or risking his life to save hers. In romance novels, you’ll find men taking care of children, talking about their feelings, putting effort into their appearance—even if they are adorably bad at it. Watch how many romance novel protagonists fall in love with a man who happens to be rich or handsome, but she didn’t give in until his behavior changed and he starts mentoring her, or providing for her, or being gentle toward her, nourishing her, listening to her, appreciating her… I suspect romance novels are looked down upon not for being juvenile formulaic “beach reads” but because they paint a fantasy world that leaves men feeling uncomfortable or even emasculated. But whether you’re a Midwest housewife or a big city CEO, women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty. Great sex they don’t have to die for is also a huge bonus, but the *romance* part of the novel is genuinely more about the woman being appreciated (for her beauty or spunk or intelligence at first, and then for all of her by the end).
“women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected to love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty.”
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max.
frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather
was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a
somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his
upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his
Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice
from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really
obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s
also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though
with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
everything about this… this statue, the choppy waves, the cliffs behind her, the echo, the drumming….. aesthetic
Lyrics in Faroese:
Trøllabundin eri eg eri eg Galdramaður festi meg festi meg Trøllabundin djúpt í míni sál í míni sál Í hjartanum logar brennandi bál brennandi bál
Trøllabundin eri eg eri eg Galdramaður festi meg festi meg Trøllabundin inn í hjartarót í hjartarót Eyga mítt festist har ið galdramaður stóð
English translation:
Spellbound am I, am I The wizard has enchanted me, enchanted me Spellbound deep in my soul, in my soul In my heart burns a smouldering fire, smouldering fire
Spellbound am I, am I The wizard has enchanted me, enchanted me Spellbound in my heart’s root, my heart’s root
Did anyone else just get the shivers? Cuz I’m definitely getting the shivers.
Btdubs, the singer is Eivør Pálsdóttir.
Reblogging again for the haunting wizard lyrics
shoutout to the faroe island for being the only real viking island left
I know the islands are owned by Denmark but this reminds me so much of Iceland
This article honestly changed everything for me. It articulates a number of issues I’ve been dealing with and struggled to explain to both myself and others.
If you’re a millennial and struggling, you will probably benefit from this article. It’s worth reading start to finish despite the length, as it just keeps throwing important, useful stuff out there!
That being said, I’m going to try to distill it so as to make it more accessible:
There is a type of burnout unrelated to one’s work, but instead all those little tasks one has to do as an adult (”adulting”). Dealing with insurance. Registering to vote. Returning unwanted clothes. Errands, paperwork, you name it. You can be highly motivated and enjoy your work, but when it comes to your to do list, you get this awful paralysis you can’t shake.
We aren’t being lazy when we are paralyzed by tasks on our to do list; there are very specific reasons we’re reacting this way—namely, millennial burnout.
We are trying to “win” the system, even though the system is unwinnable. This, of course, is a bit of a bait-and-switch, since we were told that if we studied hard and went to college we’d be able to have stable careers and a comfortable life with a home, family, 401k, etc.
A lot of us optimize our time and productivity to extremes (which, of course, would be on top of the optimizing spoonies have to do to keep afloat with limited spoons). We believe that if we just optimize right, we’ll finally be able to reach our goals and escape this hell.
Self care is often offered as a way to relieve the burnout, but it tends to just encourage this self-optimization. It’s also a hugely profitable industry.
Our generation is working through and past the burnout because we have to, and that increases our value to corporations, who continue to encourage the same old behaviors and sell us more “self care” strategies.
What can we do about all this? Well, not much aside from huge social change. But knowing about it and talking about it is half the battle.
Do note that there’s been lots of discussion and critique of this essay, particular in relation to its limitations in relevance/appropriateness to disabled folks and people of color race and disability. If you want to really deepen your understanding, definitely take to Twitter, Tumblr, and Medium and search “Millennial Burnout.”
A vote of no confidence has been called, and whether or not the outcome is what we want we have to prepare ourselves to be able to vote in the General Election that is likely to take place. Whoever you feel you should vote for, NOW is the time to sign up before it’s too late.
This goes triple for youth.
I’ll say it again - IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE, REGISTER TO VOTE RIGHT NOW
EDIT: Now as a bonus, here is some additional commentary addressing those who have reblogged or replied to this post to say things like ‘this is gross, if it were about a man doing this to a woman everyone would be up in arms’ or ‘forced marriage isn’t funny! this is NOT goals!’ (spoiler: it is in fact goals, as you will see).
So I’ve seen a handful of comments like this on this post, and people can have their own opinions etc etc but that also means that I get to have an opinion about your opinions! and my opinion is that you’re* completely wrong and I’m going to tell you why
*this is a generic you, not the above posters specifically, their nonsense just happens to be at the top of my activity page and has therefore been chosen as the default sample
OKAY so there are two main reasons why the above criticism is not the scalding tea you* seem to think it is (and is in fact powdered Crystal Light that’s only partially dissolved in lukewarm bathwater), and the first one is
1) the ‘omg this is problematic/abusive’ argument, which I’m going to call Reading Comprehension Failure, because, my good personages, did you read the fcking thing? at all? The Berkshire Lady does not in fact force this dude to do ANYTHING. She challenges him to a duel which he shows up for. Willingly! One might even say consensually. He came to the grove ready and WILLING to have a fight with someone! And when she made her counter offer she wasn’t holding her sturdy rapier to his throat? she didn’t have goons holding his arms?
All she did was say ‘either go through with the fight–the prearranged fight that you knowingly signed on for when you showed up–or marry me instead!’ and then she walked away for an hour to let him think about it! He could have chosen to fight. He could have gone home. He even had a buddy to back him up, while the Berkshire Lady doesn’t have any companion mentioned in the ballad at all. Gentle reader! this is not what coercion looks like!
2) Now I’m going to address the second argument, the ‘this isn’t actually progressive’/’just imagine if a MAN did this’, which I think of as Y’all Don’t Know Anything About Ballads. Because the POWER SWITCH IS WHY THIS BALLAD IS RAD AS FUCK. Flipping the power dynamics IS progressive, especially in this ballad from approximately 1709ish.
More than one person has tossed out the ‘imagine if this was about a man forcing himself on a woman! then you’d see!’ but my dear people, I don’t have to imagine because there is literally an entire extensive subgenre of ballads that are specifically about men coming across women alone and taking advantage of them. Often they steal a Symbolically Significant Piece of Clothing, or sometimes a Symbolically Significant Food/Crop Item, but we ALL KNOW WHAT IT REALLY MEANS except maybe the people who failed the reading comprehensive don’t so I’ll clarify, the theft of the whatever = rape. This is such a big subgenre of ballads that Terry Pratchett does a whole bit about it in Monstrous Regiment, because Sir Terry knew what was UP.
So yeah, I can compare, and now we’re getting to the really juicy bit, the really Fuck Yeah This is Subversive stuff, BECAUSE The Berkshire Lady’s Garland aka Wife or Knife is sung to the tune of another ballad, a ballad called The Royal Forester.
And The Royal Forester is a jolly little ditty that is LITERALLY about a guy meeting a woman in the woods, ‘robbing her of her maidenhead’, and then refusing to tell her his name before riding off and leaving her. She figures out who he is, takes her case to the king, the king says ‘oh oops, well we’ll find him and if he’s married, we’ll hang him! but if he’s single, he’ll marry you’. And the twist ending of that ballad is that the Earl’s daughter ends up married to the blacksmith’s son, ha ha what a good joke. ha ha.
I mean, fuck that, right? So yeah, you take the tune of THAT ballad and slap this new narrative on it, this story about a badass woman of wealth and independence choosing her own husband based on her own desire even though he’s significantly below her social station, proposing to him in the most ridiculously badass way, marrying him without revealing her beauty or wealth, and then trolling him as her first married act?
YEAH. IT IS IN FACT SUBVERSIVE AF
And bonus point 3) This ballad is about an independent woman acting on her own desires, including (VERY clearly if you read the actual ballad) her sexual desires! That’s a cool thing that we don’t see very often, women in control of their identities and tuned into their desires AND valuing those desires.
IN CONCLUSION the Berkshire Lady was a top and y’all can’t handle her